THE TRUTH ABOUT 

THE 

POULTRY BUSINESS 




Class 

Book 

GopyiightN 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



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in 2011 with funding from 
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THE TRUTH ABOUT 

THE 

POULTRY BUSINESS 



By 

CONBOIE 




PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR 

San Francisco 
1914 



Copyright, 1914 

by 

CONBOIE 



JUL 18 1914 



©CI.A376739 
*4f 



4* 



#:* 



INTRODUCTION 

A short time ago I started to prepare a description of my 
World's Best Poultry System, I had no idea of writing a 
book, but as I looked around me and saw the miserable con- 
dition of the poultry business, I found it impossible to produce 
a catalogue in which this business should be praised to the 
skies, and although I write this book at the expense of my 
poultry system, I believe there is a greater need for a book of 
this sort than there is for any poultry system. 

If a corporation owned my system and issued an elaborate 
circular I believe it would realize very large sales, because I 
am confident that my system is the biggest thing that has 
ever been brought before the poultry men. Instead, however, 
of putting my little capital into a fancy catalogue telling the 
public of the millions that are to be made in the poultry 
business by using my system, I am putting that capital into 
this book, in which the other side of the poultry business is 
revealed. 

By doing so I may keep some people out of the business and 
lose some customers for my system. This is not a usual pro- 
ceeding. I have been told that it will mean ruin to me in a 
business way, but if this book falls into the hands of some 
one and prevents him or her from losing the savings of a 
lifetime by entering the poultry business with insufficient 
knowledge of the risks it entails, I shall feel more than repaid 
for any financial loss that I may suffer. 

I do not measure success by a money standard; to me 
there is something higher than that. I believe this book will 
do more good than any book that has ever been published 



4 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

about the poultry business, and if it should cause a general 
awakening among the poultry men it will do a good which 
can never be measured by money. 

My objects in writing this book are: (1) To prevent people 
with savings that have taken them a lifetime to acquire from 
investing them in the poultry business under the delusion 
that they will get rich quickly, and to save them from that 
rude awakening which comes with the vanishing of their 
capital. (2) To show those who are in the business how, by 
using poor and out-of-date business methods and by their 
failure to co-operate — especially in politics — the profits that 
rightfully belong to them as producers go into the pockets 
of a few rich men, who produce nothing, but whose better 
business methods and control of politics enable them to take 
most all the profits. (3) To expose the various frauds that 
are practiced in connection with the poultry business. (4) To 
bring before the reader a record of my experience in the care 
and particularly in the feeding of poultry. (5) To deal with 
the housing of poultry as a science and bring it to a perfect 
state of development. (6) To show how the roup may be 
prevented. (7) To bring before the public my poultry system. 

I have dwelt herein upon the failures I have had in order 
to show the poultry business in its least favorable light and 
to right the wrongs that have been done by other poultry 
books — books that paint such a brilliant picture of the poul- 
try business that many from reading them get "poultry fever," 
a very common disease which is usually fatal to your pocket- 
book. 

At least 95 per cent of those who go into the poultry busi- 
ness fail. Do not forget that I have a poultry system to sell, 
but if this book brings you to realize what a small chance 
you have to succeed and saves you from losing your life's 
savings and from years of misery and poverty, I shall feel 



Introduction 5 

well repaid, even though I should be the cause of preventing 
you from going into the business and perhaps putting in my 
system, which would mean a few dollars to me. I consider 
it less important to obtain a business success — regardless of 
the methods employed — than to save some one from a life 
of disappointment. Let us take, for example, a gray-haired 
couple, near the end of their road through life, ready to put 
their savings into poultry in the fond belief that it will prove 
a paying investment; under conditions that exist at the 
present time (1913) they would have about one chance in a 
hundred of success. 

In this book I am giving conditions as they exist in the 
poultry business in California in 1913. When you read it, 
however, conditions may have changed, and if you intend 
going into the business or intend improving your farm you 
will do well to investigate my system. 

The facts contained in this book are the result of fifteen 
years of practical experience in the poultry business in the 
greatly varying climatic conditions of the Sacramento, San 
Joaquin, Napa and Santa Clara valleys, in San Francisco 
County and in Petaluma, during which time I have experi- 
mented with every conceivable kind of poultry house and 
every "up-to-the-minute" device for the successful raising 
of poultry known to science. 

The results from various systems of feeding have been 
obtained only after thousands of experiments had been made. 
During this time I have practically lived with hens; I have 
handled thousands of them at a time, each flock in a different 
condition, different surroundings, different locations, some 
flocks healthy, some unhealthy, some paying and some not 
paying. Some of my experiments were carried out on hens 
that were in a healthy condition and many experiments were 



6 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

made with hens bought directly from the markets and in 
bad condition. 

I know just enough about feeding poultry to realize how 
many things I do not know about the subject, but I con- 
sider that I have learned as much as most people in the 
profession, and I have attempted to disclose this information 
in this book in the way that should be most valuable to the 
reader. 



I. ABUSES 

I expect this book to be criticized by those who hold 
opposite views; it is difference of opinion that keeps life 
from stagnating. 

To get at the facts of the causes of so many failures in 
the poultry business I have gone directly to the bottom of 
the whole question. 

In order to accomplish anything toward helping poultry- 
men to obtain better living conditions — in order to accom- 
plish anything toward reducing the enormous number of 
failures — it is necessary to bring into this book certain con- 
siderations of "big business" and politics. 

When I think of the money lost, the careers spoiled, the 
misery that the 95% who are failures endure — among them 
many old people who lose their last cent — I feel as though 
I cannot ignore their suffering. Because I see such cases, 
see people in want, in sorrow, in desperation, see the last 
cent gone for food, see the end of their dream of a home, 
see them penniless, homeless, and friendless and too old to 
begin anew — I have been impelled to write this book in this 
way. I am impelled to speak plainly of the things that cause 
these failures, though in doing so I oppose the powerful 
influences of "big 'business." 

MISLEADING POULTEY BOOKS AND POULTEY 
PAPEES 

I am going to set forth a few facts as to how a large 
number of people lose their savings through being misled by 
what they read in the poultry books and poultry papers. 



8 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

Many, through their natural desire for a home, are led to 
believe that they can get rich quickly in the poultry business, 
that they can make from $4.00 to $6.00 a year per hen, when 
as a matter of fact such a thing is impossible. Persons thus 
deluded are regarded as foolish by experienced poultrymen 
and have the sympathy of every honest one. The poultry 
books by misleading you may be responsible for your losing 
your money. When this happens they are, to my mind, 
just as guilty of robbery as the man who knocks you down 
and takes your money. 

Your grandmother raised poultry successfully, and you 
may have raised poultry on a small scale and have done well 
because your hens always laid well. They laid because there 
were plenty of bugs to go round, but when you got a large 
number of hens it is a very different matter. You are inter- 
ested in poultry and you picture in your mind the satisfac- 
tion of conducting a successful poultry farm. You subscribe 
for a poultry paper, get some dealers' catalogues of poultry 
accessories, incubators, etc., and you obtain from these the 
impression that everybody is making money from hens. You 
read the "Questions and Answers" in poultry papers about 
feeding, disease, and before long you catch the "chicken 
fever" — a disease which you start to cure with a full pocket- 
book. The usual result is that the disease and the contents 
of your pocket-book disappear at the same time. 

You read articles in poultry papers, written by some back- 
yard poultry raiser who cannot make a success of the busi- 
ness himself but is always ready with advice. Most of them 
are better poultry writers than poultry raisers, but they 
supply only stereotyped information. You soon come to 
know what answer will be made to every question and you 
soon begin to be able to answer the questions yourself. Then 
you begin to think you know something about the business, 



Abuses 9 

because you consider the writer a successful poultryman, but 
most successful poultrymen are too busy making a success 
to spend time writing for papers. 

A short time ago a writer for a poultry paper which 
printed columns of his writings — believed to be authoritative 
no doubt 'by thousands of subscribers — was offered the man- 
agement of one of the finest poultry farms in the United 
States. He accepted the offer, but in a short time the farm 
deteriorated into a bad condition and he resigned. He is 
never heard from now. If he had not made the mistake 
of accepting the management of the farm and had stuck 
strictly to writing and to telling other people what to do, 
he might still be writing for a poultry paper and might have 
become famous. 

You take up a poultry paper and read of how Mary Smith 
dipped her hens' heads in coal oil or gave them quinine pills 
for roup, and how they all got well; or how she fed them 
on cayenne pepper and green onions because they were 
cheap, and how they laid so well that thereafter she never 
fed them anything else. That is the kind of rubbish that 
some poultry papers publish. It is that kind of trash that 
frequently causes people to practice inhumane treatment on 
dumb fowls. It is such articles as these that hinder you from 
learning correct methods. 

The poultry papers, month after month and year after year, 
devote columns and pages to articles written by men whose 
experience is limited to a few hens in a back yard and who 
do not have to depend on them for a living. These articles 
are not only absolutely valueless to you, but are positively 
harmful; to every poultryman with experience they are 
ridiculous. 

Year after year 95% of those who go into the poultry busi- 
ness fail. Millions of dollars are lost, thousands of careers 



10 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

wrecked, and untold misery and suffering are endured. The 
poultry papers keep on month after month printing the same 
old articles, the same old cures, and their proprietors wonder 
why their subscription lists do not increase more rapidly. 
They opine that the great number of failures are the result 
of laziness and carelessness, and so they print articles occa- 
sionally, telling you that in the poultry business you have 
to work and work hard, or that you have to have a special 
talent to succeed. But the failures continue just the same, 
and seldom if ever does anything appear in these papers 
which might have a tendency to show people what causes 
these failures. 

I know that the poultry papers, by changing their policies 
might lose some of their largest advertisers, such as the poul- 
try-feed dealers, manufacturers of condiment nostrums, etc., 
but we do not care what Mary Smith did to mend the 
crooked toe of her pet hen; what we are interested in is 
knowing why 95% of the people who go into the poultry 
business fail. Poultrymen do not believe any longer that 
the 95% who fail do so on account of laziness or for want 
of a special talent, particularly when with the hens laying 
heavily it costs more to produce eggs than they will sell for. 

We want articles that give us credit for intelligence; we 
demand articles on the conditions that are threatening our 
existence, and we demand that the large percentage of fail- 
ures be prevented. We demand that a proportion of the large 
sums that are going into the pockets of a few rich men, 
who produce absolutely nothing, be turned into the pockets 
of the real producers. When this is done, and not until then, 
the failures will diminish. We demand that the powerful 
influence of the poultry press be used in our behalf. Is it 
not most important to print information on which the very 
existence of the poultry man depends — information which 



Abuses . 11 

would help him to change conditions so that he might live, 
and which might save many old people from losing their 
$1,200 or $1,500 and ending their days in misery and poverty? 
Or is it more important to continue wasting ink and paper 
on ridiculous and worthless articles? 

The country is full of wrecked poultry farms. Why try 
to hide the facts? Many people will not want to read this 
book because it is written by a man who made several failures, 
and people don't want to read of failures, but I represent 
those who have failed. Let me say that I have also made 
several successes, but of those I am not writing. 

Every success is given space in papers, but few of the 
failures are noticed. Isn't it just as valuable to know why 
a poultry farm failed, so that you can avoid the same fate, 
as to know why some other plant succeeded, so that you can 
follow its methods? 

Is it not better to know the truth about the large numbers 
of failures, so that the conditions which cause them may be 
corrected and poverty and misery and sadness turned into 
wealth, gladness and joy? The poultry business has been the 
victim of more fakers than any business I know of. The 
poultryman has been misled and lied to, and has lost every 
dollar that could possibly be taken from him with the aid of 
clever writers, fakers of poultry tonics, egg powders, condi- 
ments, and all kinds of misleading books and systems and 
frauds. j 

The worst frauds of all are the poultry books, which lead 
you to believe that you can make $5.00 to $10.00 a year per 
hen and, by presenting visions of getting rich quickly, cause 
you to rush into the poultry business. You wake up to find 
yourself the victim of some one's lying ability and greed. You 
cannot make such profits with my system, than which there 
is none better, so how can you possibly do it with another? 



12 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

Do not rush into the business after reading this book and 
put up a big plant, thinking you are going to get rich quickly; 
I do not want my enthusiasm for my poultry plant to influ- 
ence you. 

I take several poultry papers, printed in several different 
parts of the United States, and nearly every one of them 
has some device or worthless book by which, through the 
cleverest of advertisements, you are led to believe that all 
the secrets of the poultry business will be. disclosed to you; 
or perhaps it is some one's fresh-air house where fresh air 
is supplied in abundance and absolutely without draught, or 
some worthless treatise telling you how to select laying hens. 
They are most all worthless. After investing you will soon 
find out that the houses are not draught proof, as roup is to 
be found among your hens, and that your book containing 
the secret of selecting laying hens stole its secret from the 
Hogan System. Now the best part of the Hogan System 
is copyrighted and the other is merely a cheap and worthless 
imitation. 

THE HOGAN SYSTEM 

While speaking of systems, allow me to say something of 
the Hogan System. Walter Hogan of Petaluma, California, 
the "grand old man of the poultry business," author of the 
"Call of the Hen, or the Science of Selecting and Breeding 
of Poultry," is praised by the Petaluma Poultry Journal, 
which credits him with doing for the poultry business what 
Edison, Burbank and other wizards have done in their re- 
spective fields. Wherever I have been I have heard the good 
results that are being obtained by his system, and every one 
should own a copy of the "Call of the Hen," which is the 
result of fifty-six years of intelligent study. His book does 
not tell you that you can get rich quickly, but it does tell 




"^ g 









Abuses 13 

you how many eggs hens will lay in a year with proper care, 
how many they will lay during their first, second and third 
years, and how to select breeders so that they will reproduce 
themselves — or, better, how to breed your strain into an egg 
type or beef type, etc. 

The energies of some poultry papers are applied to reliev- 
ing you of your dollar instead of helping you to change condi- 
tions so that you can save money. Their advertisements are 
worded so cleverly by men who spend months thinking out 
catchy phrases that will be attractive and will prevail on you 
to part with your money. That's the thing; never mind if 
there is not much merit in the goods advertised, the thing 
is to make the advertisement attractive — something that you 
cannot resist — so that the poultry papers get the money. 
After you get the 'book and after reading it carefully and 
trying to follow its teachings, you will see how badly you 
have been deceived and will throw it into the waste basket. 
If you are an experienced poultryman it will have done you 
no harm, but if you are not experienced and follow its ad- 
vice—perhaps put up the fresh air house it said was draught- 
proof — you soon have not only fresh air but a flock of hens 
dying of roup. If it is a book with a system for selecting 
laying hens or telling you secrets that were not worth know- 
ing, you are out your money and the victim of the cleverness 
of the advertisement writer. 

My conclusions after reading many poultry papers are 
that they are in a great measure ridiculous; that they have 
an enormous capacity for printing articles of no value whatso- 
ever; a great capacity for keeping their readers interested 
in the same old stuff that has been printed for generations; 
a great capacity for printing an article in one issue and con- 
tradicting it in the next, thus confusing the readers' minds 
so that they never know what to believe; an immense capacity 



14 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

for selling worthless poultry books, etc., and a wonderful 
capacity for keeping their readers in a state of semi-conscious- 
ness and preventing them from waking up and changing 
conditions. 

Advertising is a great help in selling anything. Look in 
every poultry paper and upon the shelves of every poultry- 
feed store and you will see advertisements of condiments, 
poultry powders, egg-making powders, tonics, roup cures, 
cures for this disease and that, and something to catch every 
odd cent you can possibly spare. To me these condiments, 
drugs, etc., are absolutely worthless; moreover, I claim they 
are positively harmful because they prevent you from learning 
methods of prevention. 

The best results can be obtained by the proper balancing 
of pure, wholesome foods, and freedom from disease will be 
obtained by proper housing and the use of sanitary methods. 
Nostrums are not what you want; don't use them. 

Remember the months that have been spent in thinking 
out the wording of the advertisements, and that the more 
clever they are the more likely are they to be merely master- 
pieces of the advertising man's art. Drugs are the poorest 
possible things upon which to stake your success. Search 
for the right foods, right conditions, right methods, instead 
of searching for a drug to correct the wrong condition. 



A WORD ABOUT REAL ESTATE AGENTS 

There is another class of men who contribute largely to 
the great number of failures in the poultry business. These 
are the real estate agents. I have seen so much of their 
work that a few words here will be of benefit to intending 
purchasers of poultry farms. We have recently been experi- 
encing a boom in real estate in California. Millions of dol- 



Abuses 15 

lars are being spent in subdividing large acreages. Some of 
the companies employ a large number of salesmen; offices 
are maintained in different cities. One company has spent 
thousands of dollars a day in advertising alone, and the 
expenses must have been enormous. They set forth in their 
advertisements how well poultry pays on their land, but the 
facts of the case are that there never was a successful poultry 
farm there, nor is there one today. After reading their 
advertisements you think that all you have to do is to buy a 
few acres, work hard, and you can make a good living raising 
poultry. The poultry business is set before you in its most 
attractive style, statistics are quoted showing what a demand 
there is for poultry and eggs, and you get the "chicken 
fever" pretty badly. You buy their land, start up in the 
poultry business, and before you know it you have a flock 
of dumpy, roupy hens. 

One company in particular has run page after page of 
advertising in the daily papers, showing pictures of fine fowls 
and telling you what a splendid location they have for poultry 
raising. It is, as a matter of fact, one of the worst possible 
locations for poultry in the State. I lived a few miles from 
the place, where I had the management of a poultry farm; 
the wind blows continually; as one man expressed it, "It 
would blow the tail off a jack rabbit." 

I called at the office at another location not very far away, 
owned by another company, and there I saw how the prospec- 
tive poultryman was swindled. He was made to believe by 
a clever-tongued rascal that he could get rich quickly in the 
poultry business; that the place was the only one in Cali- 
fornia where poultry raising can be successfully carried on. 
This in spite of the fact that there is not one successful 
farm there, because there are only a few and these have 
just been started. When you go into the office, the sales- 



16 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

man (who is sometimes a woman) sizes you up; some people 
have a talent for this and seldom make a mistake; they know 
just how to handle you. They stick to you like glue; they take 
no chances of letting you get away. The salesman is usually 
a man of pleasing ways, polished manners, and well equipped 
for the position he occupies. He has been taught since child- 
hood that the only thing worth while is the dollar, and all 
his talents are used to get it. David Harum would have died 
in the poor housa if he had made many deals with some of 
the real estate dealers I know. These men are engaged in a 
business in which competition is keen. Competition forces 
them to be conscienceless and heartless or to resign in 
favor of others who are. This being the case, they will tell 
you anything to sell land. They know that they are living 
under the "Do-others-before-they-do-you" method and they 
may as well "do" you as let the other dealer turn the trick. 

One real estate man, not knowing who I was or where I 
came from, wanted to sell me some property for a poultry 
farm which happened to be just a mile from where I had 
lived for ten years. He showed me photographs of the place 
and the description he gave me took my breath away. Accord- 
ing to his representations, this land was the finest on earth; 
it produced the finest vegetables and fruit, had the finest 
climate in the world, and was, in fact, a paradise. You can 
imagine my surprise. I knew this land to be about the poor- 
est land in the State. He tried to sell it to me for $100 per 
acre. I then told him I would sell him some land that I 
owned myself, located within one mile of his place, for $10.00 
an acre, and I also told him how poor the land was. He said 
he did not care about buying any more land, and then pro- 
ceeded in the calmest manner possible, and without even a 
blush, to inform me that I did not realize the true value of 
the location or the soil. He did it so cleverly that I have 



Abuses 17 

always believed this man to be the king-pin liar in the real 
estate business; I may be mistaken in this, however, for not 
long ago while managing a farm in a poultry center I was 
told a story that is famous in that district. 

It seems that a real estate agent brought out a prospective 
buyer in an auto to see a place and asked him twice the value 
of the farm. The dealer took great pains in telling his man 
what a fine water supply there was. The "prospect" was 
very well pleased and intended purchasing the place. On 
returning a little later, the woman who was caring for the 
place asked him if he intended purchasing, and on being told 
that he did, she said: "Don't you know that there is not a 
drop of water on the place?" "You are mistaken, madam, as 
I tested the water and the tank is full." "Oh yes," she said, 
"but that water was hauled and put in the tank for your 
especial benefit." 

Is this method of dishonesty and misrepresentation to 
continue? Are we always to use the motto, "Do others before 
they do you?" Or will there come a time when we will see 
the value of honesty and adopt a motto of "Do justice to 
others so that others can do well for themselves?" Are we 
always going to have a method of doing business that stifles 
the best that is in a man, offers the greatest rewards to him 
who puts his true self in the background and forces him to 
practice greed, injustice, and dishonesty, or can we change 
this method to one which will offer its greatest rewards to 
the honest and just man and bring out the best that is in 
all of us? Conditions are changing rapidly, and the unjust 
methods of doing business may yet change to honest ones. 

A great many things tend to induce people to go into 
the poultry business. It looks to be so easy and poultry 
books and papers and real estate agents, etc., use all kinds 
of schemes to get people into the business. Some companies 



18 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

go so far as to build a poultry farm to draw on others. Others 
go so far as to advertise that they have in their employ an 
expert poultryman who will teach you the business. Is it 
any wonder there are so many failures in the poultry business 
when you realize how many people engage in it who are 
utterly unfit for it? 

You have the poultry papers painting a lovely picture of 
this business, and you have the real estate agents telling you 
how you can make an easy living at it. Incubator companies 
and a large number of poultry-food manufacturers, manufac- 
turers of brooders and other poultry accessories put out 
attractive pamphlets and catalogues, some of which are 
works of art, and they all add their influence to get you 
into the business. There are also the breeders of fine poultry 
who issue catalogues with attractice pictures of their fine 
birds, which, if you have any real interest for poultry, you 
will want to own. There are the men who write poultry 
books, who claim to make from $5.00 to $10.00 a year per hen, 
and after you have read these things you are no ordinary 
individual if you can resist them. 

You read of a little home in the country with chickens, 
from which, if you will work hard, a good living may be 
derived. Work? Why you may be willing to work night 
and day to get away from the life in the city, from the uncer- 
tainty of not knowing when you may lose your position, 
from the fear of losing your health and being forced into the 
poor house. You think of that "little home" with chickens 
in the country, and instantly there arises before you a vision 
of such a home and you determine to obtain one. You are 
just like everyone else; we all have the same longings. You 
are willing to work; why, you are willing to slave if you 
could only own your own home where you would be working 
for yourself and be your own master. You know that if you 



Abuses 19 

lose your job it will require a "pull" to obtain another, and 
as you have no "pull" you have a poor chance. You and 
your wife are growing old and you decide to make a last 
stand. You realize your condition and after reading the 
poultry books, and seeing the real estate agent, you buy a 
"little home" on the installment plan, a flock of hens, an 
incubator, some chick-food, and somebody's egg-food. You 
put your hens in "fresh-air" houses, and then you begin to 
work and you do this job and that and at night you are all 
worn out. You would not mind this if your hens would only 
lay, but for some reason that you do not understand your 
hens do not lay, your chicks all die, a large number of hens 
get the roup and die (although, like Mary Smith, you dipped 
their heads in coal oil). Next, you rush off and get roup 
cures to cure roup, egg powders and "tonic" to get the eggs 
started and "tone up the hens," but your hens get worse. 
You have been feeding your hens the best food on earth, but 
still no eggs come. You do not realize that it takes more 
to make hens lay than just buying egg-food and feeding it 
to them. You can feed egg-foods that cost fancy prices and 
not get eggs, for an inexperienced person can easily unbalance 
a properly balanced ration by a wrong system of feeding. 



POULTRY FOODS 

You must have experience, you must understand how to 
make your hens lay, and you should know how to mix your 
own feed and how the different effects which different grains, 
etc., have upon the fowls, even though you desire to feed 
prepared foods to your flock. There are good and indifferent 
poultry foods manufactured. Some of these are made by 
practical poultrymen with years of experience and are worthy 
of a fair trial. Some may be far better than those I shall 



20 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

give you later, as I know only enough about feeding poultry 
to know what a vast and scientific study it is and how much 
I do not know. 

When feeding anybody's poultry food or system, feed it 
exactly as directed. If the directions say to feed so much of 
this kind of grain and so much of that, it is because the 
inventor knows that it requires those amounts and those in- 
gredients to balance his mash properly. If you are going to 
feed his system, follow his directions; if not, then feed some 
other system that you like better. 

It has taken me fifteen years to learn what I know, still I 
know some people who learn more in one year than others 
learn in fifteen years or a whole lifetime. 

When the beginner finds his hens are not laying on the 
egg-food, his chicks dying on the chick-food, and his hens 
dying with roup, his vision of a happy home begin to fade, 
and he probably gives up in disgust. If he is made of "sterner 
stuff" (which the poultry papers say you must be made of to 
succeed), he sticks it out a little longer and if he can hold 
out until spring when the old hens begin to lay he thinks 
he will win out. But at that time of the year the price of 
eggs may go down to a point where it costs more to produce 
them than they will sell for, and he is as bad off as he was 
before. After losing all he has and all he could beg or 
borrow, he is forced to give up. Was it because he did not 
work hard? No, he did work hard and he was willing to 
slave to succeed. Many, with their last dollar gone, have not 
a friend or a place to go to. What man wants to go to the 
poor house? What man wants to suffer the humiliation of 
a failure? I had several and I know that each one hurts 
more than the one before. What man wants to give up his 
home? 



Abuses 21 

No one can ever know to what depths of humiliation I 
have been cast through making a failure. I lost home, money, 
friends, everything through my failures, and if I take these 
pages to warn you to be careful you will understand why 
I do so. 

I hope my pen never leads any one to lose a single dollar 
through giving a false impression of the poultry business. 
I am writing this book for the purpose of telling the truth — 
the truth as I know it, a knowledge gained from practical 
experience. 

When things begin to go wrong on the beginner's poultry 
farm, he does not know what to do. His hens stand around 
mopily, he is absolutely in the dark. He is like some men 
with a gasoline engine; they can run it when everything goes 
all right. So the poultryman can feed his hens properly and 
sometimes make them pay even without experience if he 
happens to be located where the ground is soft and the hens 
can get plenty of bugs and worms and green food and grain. 
Under these conditions he may make money — not through 
any knowledge of his own but through luck — inasmuch as 
the location supplies the hens with everything they need. 
They balance their own ration and lay copiously while there 
are plenty of bugs and worms, but when the ground gets dry 
and hard and too many hens are put on the ground, so that 
there is not enough natural food to go around, the hens stop 
laying, something goes wrong, just as when something goes 
wrong with the gasoline engine. Now, if you do not under- 
stand a gasoline engine, what a time you would have in 
getting it started if there was anything very radical the mat- 
ter with it. You might work on that engine indefinitely and 
never get it going. You can do exactly the same thing with 
hens. You must have experience and lots of it. You want 
to become just as expert at making a hen lay after she has 



22 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

stopped, and be just as sure about it as the expert is with 
the engine. He knows instantly where to look for the trouble 
— not from books he has read, but from having the same thing 
occur before in actual practice. That is the main thing; 
having the thing happen and profiting by the experience. 

The expert, knows every little sound, every little false 
motion the engine makes, and he knows just how to correct 
it; the more experience he has had and the more troubles 
he has had to overcome, the more expert he becomes. It is 
exactly the same thing in feeding hens. By careful experi- 
menting you learn why hens eat grit by the mouthful, why 
they eat dirt, why they eat charcoal and will leave grain and 
go for these things like mad. You also learn why a hen will 
eat wheat and not corn, and at other times will leave the wheat 
and fight for corn. You also learn by careful watching of 
the droppings and by taking note of the cravings of a hen 
what to feed her to keep her in good health and how to make 
her lay if she is not doing so. You will learn these things 
by carefully experimenting, and by studying this book very 
carefully you also learn how to produce large eggs, with yel- 
low yolks, and plenty of them; you also learn so to feed your 
hens that in a short time after starting laying they will not 
"turn over" or start on the downward grade and stop laying. 
These and countless other things you learn, but, like the 
engine man, you must have the practical experience. 

Reading these things from a book may enable you to find 
what troubles your hens, but it can never take the place of 
practical experience. There are always some little things 
that come up that the book does not cover and which you 
must study out for yourself. This is so in every profession 
and in every trade and the poultry business is no exception. 

The poultry business is a profession, which requires years 
of experience to learn, and feeding on a small scale and in 



Abuses 23 

small flocks is quite different from feeding on a large scale 
and in big flocks. If your feed is right, it is just as easy to 
handle poultry on a large scale, but if your feed is not right 
you will have more hens out of condition and the hens out 
of condition should be separated from the others. When you 
separate the non-layers and feed them a little differently 
from the layers you can handle them in large flocks just as 
well as you can in small ones. The larger the flocks and the 
larger your plant, the more experience you need. If you go 
into the business, go in on a small scale, experiment carefully 
and have some other source of income so that you do not 
have to depend on your poultry for a living. Go slowly, be 
careful, and do not let the fever overcome your caution. 

The way to experiment is given elsewhere in this book. 
Remember that you are not going to learn in a day or a 
month what it has taken others years to learn; that you 
cannot get the best results at first, or if you do you will be 
the loser thereby because if everything goes along smoothly 
you will have no opportunity to learn what to do when things 
go wrong. What you want to know is why the machine broke 
down, how to fix it, and how to prevent it from breaking 
down the next time. That is the experience you want, so 
that you may always be prepared. 



HOW TO DESTROY LICE 

One of the first things that people ask me is what do I do 
for lice, and may I say that a certain amount of lice is good 
for a hen. The treatment of lice is the simplest part of the 
poultry business. By painting the roots with a good lice- 
killer, especially the under sides of them and every place 
where mites are likely to live, I have avoided all trouble from 
mites, and by mixing a good lice-killer or a little crude car- 



24 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

bolic acid and sawdust and putting this in the bottom of the 
nests and then putting shavings on top of the mixture, 
trouble is avoided there. I sprinkle one end of the lattice 
yard very slightly with water, and hens by the hundred will 
dust themselves in it. Care must be taken to sprinkle very 
lightly on the soft, dry dirt, so as not to get it too damp, 
for if that is done the hens will not dust in it; if, on the 
other hand, it is just slightly damp they are very fond of it. 
For the large head lice I put grease on the head or use some- 
thing equally as good, but for other than head lice I provide 
the damp, soft dirt and the hen frees herself of the parasites. 

You must thoroughly understand that it takes experience 
to make success, and you cannot put up my system or any 
other and make a success of it without the necessary experi- 
ence unless it is done by accident. You get into the business, 
put up my system, and in a little while you have made a 
brilliant failure and I get the blame, as it is pointed out that 
you had a Conboie System poultry farm and failed with it; 
it cannot, therefore, be any good. You conclude that you 
think the system does not amount to much, and all your 
neighbors form the same opinion. The result is that you 
lose and I lose, because you jumped into a business without 
knowing the first principles of success. Your venture spelled 
failure from the start and any experienced poultryman could 
have told you so. After you have finished this book, turn 
back and read this part over again, so that if you are looking 
at this business through rose-colored glasses you will see 
your mistake. 

First learn something about the business by experimenting 
and then go into it carefully; there is money in it only for 
these people who do this. By experimenting, you are getting 
experience in the cheapest possible way; you cannot lose 
much with a small number of hens. Remember it takes time 



Abuses 25 

to learn and there are many discouragements to overcome, 
and that which is worth doing is worth doing well. Whatever 
you do, don't make the most fatal mistake of all: Don't 
think that the people who are now engaged in the poultry 
business know less about it than you do; you may be able 
in time to "show them," but it will be several years before 
you can do so. The majority of people in the poultry busi- 
ness know little about it, but there are a few who know it 
thoroughly and have studied it very carefully from a great 
many different angles. 



II. PERSONAL EXPERIENCES 

I had a position paying me a good salary which I gave up 
for a small job on a poultry farm and I have struggled 
through fifteen years of poverty and discouragement — many, 
many times with the bare necessities of life and sometimes 
without even these — so that I could continue my experiment- 
ing, and learn the secrets of the hen. I have been an object 
of ridicule for many; I lost every dollar I possessed; I lost 
every friend I had. I have struggled through, and I have 
seen so many homes lost by poultry people, people with 
experiences similar to mine that these memories are ever 
vivid to me. 

Shall we, under the present method of doing business, for- 
get such things as honesty and kindness? If we do, then the 
quicker we change our methods the better. Even an outcast 
from the lowest depths can and will respond to kindness, 
and kindness will bring out the best that is in even the 
worst of us; kindness will lead to success where injustice 
will bring disaster. 

I started into the poultry business fifteen years ago. Every- 
body told me that my hens would get the swell-head and 
die, but I was going to go into it even if they did, because 
I was interested in hens and if others could make a living 
in the business, why not I? I bought incubators, etc., and 
hatched 2,200 chicks that year, and as I then knew positively 
nothing about the business I lost 2,100 of them. I was 
located on the bank of a creek far out in the wilderness, and 
one morning I looked out of my poultry house and saw the 
hens all perched up on the roosts. The house was three 



28 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

feet deep in water, as was the house I was living in; we were 
in the center of a stream a mile wide where formerly it was 
only about one hundred feet wide. The water came within 
two inches from coming into the house and the hens were 
perched on their roosts for three days. I came to the con- 
clusion that where there was three feet of water it was not 
the best place for raising chickens. Either I would have 
to go into the duck business or move, so I concluded to 
move. 

I began again in the fall to raise chickens at another loca- 
tion. When I had no more than got started, the wind blew 
my living* house down, so I decided to leave this place also. 
After getting another place I again began to raise chickens, 
and this time I was successful and raised nearly all I hatched. 
A large incubator company, seeing the success I was having, 
and the interest that I was creating in the poultry business 
at this place, appointed me their agent and as such I became 
very well known in this vicinity. Everything here was 

going well and I sent $1.00 to a poultry paper for S -'s 

Method of Feeding Hens for Eggs. The formula and direc- 
tions were as follows: 

Yt part of Corn Meal, 
Y\ part of Beef Scrap, 
V2 part of Coarse Bran. 
Feed enough of this mixture so that the hens eat it 
up clean before night. Feed dry. By this system of 
feeding hens seldom have indigestion and will lay all 
the eggs you desire. With this system of feeding 
hens do not require green food. By actual test hens 
that had no green food layed better than those that 
did have. Keep grits, bone, shells and charcoal be- 
fore them at all time and feed equal parts of corn, 
wheat, and oats, 5 quarts per day to 100 hens. 



Personal Experiences 29 

The papers printed numerous testimonials from prominent 
poultrymen all over the United States — some of whom were 
known from one end of the country to the other. These 
poultrymen claimed that this system of feeding laying hens 
was the best that had even been brought before the public, 

and strongly advised its use. S 's Method is a good 

method under some conditions, but under other conditions 
that you will presently understand it is worthless. 

I built a large house 32 by 100 feet, with an alleyway run- 
ning through the center of it. It was divided inside into 
pens every 10 feet, and it also had a yard 10 by 50 feet for 
each pen. I had this full of beautiful white leghorn hens, 
7 months old, and I will say that those pullets were in the 
best health of any that I have ever seen on any poultry farm 
I have ever visited. The wind was broken by the trees, 
which were very thick, and while there was not very much 
sun in the yards and the yards were damp in wet weather, 
I had not a single case of sickness of any kind whatever 
among the hens. I did not lose a single hen; every hen was 
the picture of health, and the roup they had when young 
disappeared entirely. There was not a single case of bowel- 
trouble all the time I kept them, except one day when I 
used meat-meal instead of "Beef, Blood and Bone." A great 
many people from all around the country came to see these 
hens, and they were pronounced by all to be the finest that 
they had ever seen. 

These hens had been badly afflicted with roup when they 
were young and in the brooder house. I bought Roup cures 
— enough to cure all the hens in the country — but I soon 
found out that roup cures do not work if you leave hens or 
chicks in draughty houses, such as I afterwards found this 
brooder house to be. I was pretty much disgusted with roup, 
but after the chicks were older and were put in a large house 



30 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

in the oak grove, out of the draught, they soon got well 
without the aid of any roup cures, and I have never had any 
faith in roup cures since. 

These hens were fed S 's Method, but as there was no 

beef-scrap in California at that time, the editor of the poultry 
paper advised using "Beef, Blood and Bone," which I did. 
At first I fed wheat, oats, and corn for grain, but I soon 
found that the hens did not care for the oats and corn, and 
I stopped feeding these two grains, but they were crazy for 
wheat. They would eat wheat and not touch the other 
grain, and twice a day I would feed two and one-half quarts 
of wheat to them about 8 A. M. and again about an hour 
before sundown. These hens knew feeding time as well as 
I did, and it was a beautiful sight to look out and see the 
hens running up and down along the wire fence in their 
separate yards when feeding time approached. 

Make them work? Why, there was no such thing as mak- 
ing them work; you could not stop them from working, 
scratching, and playing in the straw and litter, in which I 
scattered the wheat. I do not know whether I used any 
particular kind of wheat or bran, as I just bought it from 
the grocery store and the hens were in fine condition, but 
they did not lay. They would work (I call it play) until 
dark and they could no longer see, and bright and early in 
the morning you could look out and see them scratching in 
the litter. When I say provide a place for your hens to play, 
you know what I mean, for it is only play for the hens 
to scratch if the conditions are right, the feed is right, and 
when the hens are in good health. You do not have to make 
a hen work any more than you have to make a healthy boy 
play. It is fun for the boy and it is fun for the hen, but if 
the boy is not feeling well it is work for him, and if the 
hen is out of condition from wrong feeding or improper 



Personal Experiences 31 

housing it is work for her; she does not need work then; sick 
people and sick hens need rest. What hens need is a properly- 
balanced ration and a properly ventilated home — the same 
as yourself. If these conditions are provided, you will notice 
that whereas you could not previously make her work you 
cannot now stop her from playing. But your ration must be 
correctly balanced, or your labor is in vain. 

My hens were scratching most all day, but they were very 
fat and laid only an occasional soft-shelled egg. One thing 
which I wish to impress distinctly on your mind is that, 
although these hens were scratching most of the day, they 
were very fat — too fat to lay, although in excellent condi- 
tion otherwise. I have never since been able to keep hens 
in such a condition for so long a time, although I have often 
fed the same feed but from a different milling company. 

I fed S 's Method — except that I used wheat for grain 

and "Beef, Blood, and Bone" instead of beef-scrap — and did 
not feed any green food, but no eggs resulted. I then thought 
that if fat was the cause of my not getting any eggs I would 
quickly remedy that, so I continued feeding the wheat twice 

a day, but instead of the S 's receipt I gave them dry 

bran for a week. I was sure that that would reduce them, 
and after a week of the bran and wheat feeding I would give 

them the S 's receipt again. In a few days the feathers 

began to fall from the hens, especially the feathers of the 
neck. The dry bran caused a moult, although not a very 
heavy one. (Hens should never be fed on dry bran with 
such a little amount of grain, unless they are very fat, and 
the result is apt to be disastrous to the weaker ones if con- 
tinued). The combs of the hens now began to turn red, 
they began to cackle, and the eggs began to come by the 
hundreds. The hens would keep this up for about a week 
and the soft-shell eggs would begin to appear again, and at 



32 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

the end of a week there were a lot of fat hens but no more 
eggs. 

I would then go back to the bran treatment again and get 
the same results as I got before. I repeated this several 
times, as I wished to be sure, and each time I got the same 
results. I concluded, therefore, that I thoroughly under- 
stood that part of the poultry business and decided to change 
my feed a little. 

After feeding bran and wheat for a week I did not feed 
the S receipt, but used instead the following formula: 

y 2 Bran 

*4 Middlings 

% B. B. & B. 

Wheat 5 qts. to 100 hens 

Green food. 

The hens started to lay just as they did when they received 

the S receipt, and at the end of two weeks I was getting 

66% of eggs per day. I then began to look for the soft- 
shelled eggs to appear, and I was also expecting my hens 
to stop laying as the days went on, but the soft-shelled eggs 
did not appear and my hens kept on laying and did not stop. 
Now, in order to be sure that it was the corn that prevented 
them from laying, I put corn in the mash instead of the 
middlings and in a few days soft-shelled eggs began to 
appear and in a short time the hens stopped laying. Then 
I cut out the corn in the receipt and put in middlings, and 
in a short time my hens began to lay again. I repeated this 
experiment over and over and over again and got exactly 
the same result every time. 

I began to think I knew something about the poultry 
business. Had I not by repeated experiments proved that 
corn was not good for laying hens? I had proved it over and 



Personal Experiences 33 

over again. I learned then that I would have to depend on 
myself, and I thought I knew something about the poultry 
business that no one else knew. I was positive that corn 
was not the proper food for laying hens, for just as soon 
as I would begin to feed it, the hens would stop laying, and 
just as soon as I would use the middlings they would begin 
to lay and would not stop. Could anything be plainer? 

I wondered how the originator of the S Method had 

ever used so much corn meal in his ration; I wondered 
if he were not just another fraud. I wondered if by any 
chance I could be mistaken. I had read in the poultry papers 
that corn was a fine poultry food and to feed plenty of it; 
also that hens preferred it to wheat. I would try to feed 
whole corn to the hens, but they refused to eat it every time, 
and I thought the poultry papers were wrong. When I put 
it in mash instead of middlings my hens got too fat and 
stopped laying. 

I was very eager to succeed — to "make good" in the poul- 
try business. I had dreams of having some day the greatest 
poultry farm in the world. The poultry papers said that it 
took hard work and lots of it to succeed in the poultry busi- 
ness — in fact 365 days of hard work every year. Well, if 
that would make a success I was going to succeed; I would 
never for one second neglect my hens. I was very ambitious, 
but I soon found out that hard work will not make a hen 
lay an egg, whereas right feeding and proper housing will. 

I have never neglected my poultry for one minute since 
I started in the poultry business. I have never fed them 
food that I would not eat myself, except beef-scrap or granu- 
lated milk, and of these I always got the best. I have at 
times stinted myself in order that my hens might have the 
best food to eat. I was eager to learn, to know exactly how 
to make hens lay eggs, and I knew I would never learn unless 



34 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

I were very particular both as to the quality and quantity 
of the food I gave them. I always gave the exact measure, 
so that I might be sure of my experiments. 

In view of this care and in view of my obtaining the same 

results with the S Method time after time, I concluded 

that corn was not good for laying hens. 

Don't forget how careful I was in conducting my experi- 
ments. I was absolutely sure that my deductions were cor- 
rect. Right here, permit me to say that I make the biggest 
mistake of my life, a mistake that ruined my poultry career, 
broke me up in business, and blasted every hope of my "best 
poultry farm on earth." 

I had gone three years without making a cent; I had been 
paying out all the time in the hope of ultimate success. Now 
I was getting bucketsful of eggs every day. I accepted the 
price the retail grocer gave me (12c per dozen), but after 
paying the feed dealer 30c to 50c on the dollar above quota- 
tions for grain, I was rapidly losing money. As far as my 
hens were concerned I was making a great success of the 
poultry business, but there were other conditions that pre- 
vented me from making a real success — conditions that 
would force me either to sell out or go "broke." 

I sold my hens and thinking I could get better prices for 
eggs if located near San Francisco, I rented a place near 
there and began again. If I had been able to buy my feeds 
at a reasonable price and had obtained a reasonable price 
for my eggs at the first place, I might have been there yet. 
I had undoubtedly made a great success, as far as producing 
eggs went, but it was entirely by accident that I did so. It 
happened that the food balanced correctly, the hens' diges- 
tion perfect, and I was in ignorance of the true conditions; 
this was proved by my subsequent experience, from which I 
learned the real facts. 




hi 



Personal Experiences 35 

Poultrymen often balance rations correctly by accident 
and are very successful for a while, but as their success is 
the result of an accident they remain in ignorance of the 
facts and later frequently meet with failure. 

I had gone nearly three years wtihout making anything. I 
had learned a little by experimenting, but it takes money to 
live and I did not have much left. After renting a place near 
San Francisco I bought several hundred hens and had visions 
of making money rapidly on account of the 'better price I 
received for eggs. I was now going to reap the benefit of 
the knowledge I had gained. 

I bought the same meat from the same firm that I did 
before and mixed it the same way, as follows: 

Vi Bran, 

% Middlings, 

Y$ Beef, Blood and Bone, 

Wheat, Green food. 

While I was congratulating myself on the location I had 
obtained and on the fact that, as far as keeping my hens in 
excellent condition was concerned, I knew the poultry busi- 
ness, and because I was getting 60%' oi eggs a day, I came 
out of my dream and began to think that in the matter of 
making hens lay I knew nothing about the poultry business 
at all. 

Work? Why, I never stopped working. I carried on my 
back the finest kind of green food from the vegetable gar- 
dens along the ocean to my little poultry farm two miles 
distant. Later, after several years of failure and my capital 
entirely exhausted, I obtained a position in San Francisco 
foi* six months of the year; every morning I would take the 
train at 6 A. M., ride ten miles, then walk one mile and work 
in steam and water for eighteen and twenty and many times 



36 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

for twenty-two hours a day. You cannot tell me you make 
money merely by working hard; I tried it and I know. 

That is why I laugh when one mentions hard work to me 
in connection with success in the poultry business. If I got 
through by 11:50 P. M. I would take the street car home; if I 
did not get through by that time I would sleep on the sugar 
sacks until it was time to go to work again. During this 
time I was very sick for six months, but I worked just the 
same. 

Every morning before I went to work I would see that 
the hens were properly cared for that they might be all right 
for the rest of the day. I fed my hens exactly as I did at the 
other place, but instead of beginning to lay they began to 
die. They would stand around all day in the shade and 
would not scratch, nor could I make them do so. They did 
not seem to be hungry and when I would feed them their 
grain they would eat a little and then go back again to the 
shade or to the roosts. 

I never knew before what bowel trouble among hens was, 
but I know now. I had not encountered any at the other 
place, but now almost all my hens had it. They would eat 
granulated bone by the sack; it seemed as though they could 
not get enough. When I broke up crockery and glass and 
gave it to them they would eat it as my other hens had eaten 
wheat. I cleaned the town out of broken crockery. In the 
droppings of the hens there would often be nothing but 
crockery. One day when breaking coal for the house I saw 
the hens were crazy for it, although they always had char- 
coal before them; they ate all the chips that flew off which 
were of a certain size — about the size of corn — and there- 
after I would sometimes spend hours breaking up coal for 
them. It did them no good, however; in fact, nothing I did 
seemed to do them any good. 



Personal Experiences 37 

The food I gave them almost turned them inside out. It 
was the same food I had fed before, the same, "Beef, Blood, 
and Bone," the same proportions in the mash; I fed it in the 
same way; everything, as far as I could see, was exactly the 
same, but these hens died on the same food on which the 
others had lived and laid. One flock of hens was sick 
and stood around; the other hens were healthy and full of 
play. One flock of hens was a source of trouble; the other 
flock had been a source of satisfaction. One flock of hens 
had kept me; but I had to work to keep the others. I could 
not understand it at all. 

I had to begin to experiment again. I fed every receipt 
that I had ever heard of, and many others that I worked out 
myself. Sometimes I would think that I had solved the 
problem, but in a few days I would have to change again, as 
I could see that there was something wrong. Every time I 
made a failure with a new feed I had ten others that I was 
sure would work. As I had several pens to experiment with, 
and as at times I lived with these hens from daylight until 
dark and watched them very closely, I would think each 
time I changed the food that I learned a little. I would 
think each change would bring the desired result, but for 
four years at this one place it was one continuous dis- 
appointment. 

Sometimes I would run an experiment for a month; I 
could tell how others acted in a day. I read in the poultry 
papers "make your hens work," and so I would try to make 
them work. I would buy nice new straw, put it in the 
houses and yards and feed the hens in it. But they did not 
want to work and some of them died as a result. Some would 
scratch for a few minutes and then stand around. Once in a 
while I would scare them out of the corner, but it did no 
good; they would soon be back again. Once in a while they 



38 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

would eat a little dry mash, but only about one-fourth of what 
the other flock of hens ate. The hens that were the weakest 
ate the least. 

I thought, that if I could not make them work when they 
had the dry food in front of them, perhaps if I should 
dampen the mash slightly so that it would hold together and 
scatter it in the clean straw and on the clean floor, they 
would work more. If, as the poultry papers said, it was on 
account of the accumulation of fat on the hens that pre- 
vented them from laying, by making the hens work more 
this would be worked off. I had already tried the dry bran, 
but the hens began to die, and I had to change. I tried mak- 
ing them work for a couple of weeks, and the results were 
very bad. 

During this time quite a number of my hens did not eat 
a bite and several died. I saw that this system of feeding 
was not good, and so I went to the wet mash system, feed- 
ing grain in the morning and mash at night. After several 
weeks of this system of feeding, my hens were in an awful 
condition. Roup was now prevailing in the flock. 

I used pure, fresh blood in the mash instead of "Beef, 
Blood, and Bone," and the results were worse. 

For years I changed from one system of feeding to another 
and from one food to another, feeding one pen a little differently 
from the others. I confess that I made about the most brilliant 
failure of any one that ever engaged in the poultry business. 
After eight years of the hardest kind of work I did not have a 
cent — eight years of studying faithfully the methods advocated 
in the best books ever written on poultry by supposed experts. 
After eight years of this I knew absolutely nothing about making 
a success of the poultry business. My knowledge consisted of 
knowing only a great many things that would not work. 



Personal Experiences 39 

Among my hens was one young leghorn pullet about six months 
old. One morning I heard her outside the door cackling. I 
opened the door and she came in. After a while she made a 
nest on a sack and laid an egg. I grew very fond of this hen, 
and I would give her a cup of wheat and a cup of oats and let 
her help herself. She also ate bread and milk left by the dog, 
and she seemed fonder of this than of the grain. Day after day 
that hen would come into the house and lay. When she was 
outside I would see her scratching in the ground for worms. 
Very seldom would she miss a day without laying an egg. 

The other hens, I noticed, would not eat for a week or so at 
a time. Then I would notice them scratching for angle worms. 
A crust would start to form on the comb, the comb begin to 
turn red, the droppings become clean and free from odor, and 
the hen would start to lay; but she would, however, lay only a 
few eggs and then she would be taken sick, her droppings would 
be bad and she would be sick for a week or so. This would be 
repeated about every fortnight, and the hens would become 
gradually weaker. 

The hen that came into the house did not eat the mash 
food that the other hens ate. She never stopped laying. She 
seemed to be nice and fat and had all the grain she could 
possibly eat, while my other hens all seemed to be poor. I 
thought that if the grain helped her it would probably be 
a good thing for the flock, so I put out a sack of wheat for 
the other hens. They were very badly afflicted with roup, 
and there were no worse looking hens in the country. They 
were also afflicted with canker. 

I turned them out to roost in the trees. Never in my life 
have I seen hens change so quickly. In a few days nearly 
all of them were out scratching after worms. They would 
go after the wheat, and then the eggs began to come. 



40 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

Now and then I shut up fifty of the hens in ten different 
pens and placed before them different grains, beef-scrap, and 
bran and middlings, thinking that they would go on laying. 
But in a short time they stopped laying, while the hens run- 
ning outside kept right on. The hens had by this time gotten 
over the roup and canker. The cure had been effected by an 
abundance of fresh air without draught in a sheltered spot. 

At this time I had to move to a different location where 
the ground was not soft as it had been at the other place. 
The hens could not scratch and get worms and bugs, and 
while they had a larger place to run and were fed in the same 
way, they soon stopped laying. Bowel-trouble appeared and 
roup also began to come back in the flock. I noticed that the 
droppings were full of pin-head worms, sometimes as many as 
fifty passing from one hen at a time. There were also many 
long, round worms from a fourth of an inch to five inches 
in length. Many times a large number of them would be 
found in one pile. These hens were kept in colony houses. 

As they stopped laying, I was again forced to experiment. 
I fed corn and oats, as the poultry books advised, but the 
results were disastrous, as quite a number of hens got white 
diarrhoea and were in an awful condition. The more corn 
and oats I fed the worse my hens became, and the less I 
fed the better they would be. This turned me once more 
against corn. 

I began to feed mostly wheat and dry bran, with a little 
meat scrap, but got no results. Then I read of a man who 
advocated feeding dry bran in a hopper, and wheat, oats and 
corn in straw, and also placing beef-scrap in a separate 
hopper; but I could not make this work, either! 

At the same time I fed several hens I had shut up the 
same way I had fed the bread-and-milk hen, but they would 
not lay. I kept on experimenting, and it seemed as though 



Personal Experiences 41 

nothing I could do would make these hens lay. I concluded 
I had made another failure such as everyone can expect until 
he understands the business, which was little satisfaction 
to me. 

I still had the bread-and-milk hen. She always ate in the 
house. I would watch her eat to find out why she laid. One 
day I thought I would fool her and gave her a little extra 
meat — 5% in a mash in the morning and at 4 P. M. As a 
result I had an awfully sick hen. She staid on the nest all 
day and laid two eggs, the last egg being soft-shelled, with 
a soft-shelled piece about two inches long attached to it. 
I thought she would die, 'but she did not, although she did 
not eat again for several days. In a couple of weeks she 
was laying again. 

It is wonderful what can be accomplished with foods. By 
a badly-balanced ration a hen will be knocked off her feet, 
have leg weakness, become paralyzed in different parts of 
her body, and develop all kinds of diseases. 

I believe that most diseases of hens and human beings 
come from a badly-balanced food. A more important thing 
than the feeding of poultry is the feeding of human beings. 
Wonderful results can be obtained by the use of proper 
foods. My main reason for writing this book is to obtain 
money to go on with my experiments with hens, as I believe 
the knowledge so gained can be turned to the use of human- 
ity. How can drugs cure when your food is wrong? How 
can good results be obtained by a wrong system of feeding? 
Is it not a fact that through a badly-balanced ration a hen 
gradually becomes weaker and often develops tuberculosis? 
I believe that the same thing holds true with human beings. 
We become weak from wrong feeding and are easy prey for 
deadly germs. We rush to doctors and seek their aid, but 
the disease has got a start and it is hard to cure. If we 



42 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

understood how to feed ourselves properly, such things might 
be prevented. Everyone knows that "an ounce of prevention 
is worth a pound of cure." 

Obtaining a chance of a better place, I now moved again. 

Again I tried the S Method, but the hens did not want 

to eat it. I turned them all out, and they went straight to 
a manure pile where they got an abundance of bugs. I put 
out a sack of wheat for them, and the eggs began to come 
fast. They laid so many eggs and in so many different places 
that it kept me busy looking for nests. The hens were in 
good condition now and kept right on laying. 

I had ten pens about six feet square, with five hens in 
each. These I fed as I had fed my pet hen. The food con- 
sisted of the very best bread, thoroughly dried and ground 
to the size of coarse bran. Here is the formula: 
10 Bread, 

1 Milk ground fine, 
Wheat and green feed. 
Feed the bread and milk dry and keep it before hens 
at all times. 

Since my first experience with the S Method I had 

always fed my hens green food. Each of the pens was fed 
on the above food. One pen was fed 1 part of milk to 5 
parts of ground bread, and the next pen a little more bread 
and less milk, and so on until the last pen got 1 part of milk 
to 20 parts of bread. 

The hens that got 1 part of milk to 5 parts of bread laid 
smaller eggs than the others. The pen that got 20 parts of 
bread to 1 of milk did not lay quite as many eggs. It seemed 
that the ration given to the pen that got 1 part of milk to 
10 parts of bread was the most evenly balanced, and I there- 
fore began to feed all the pens in that proportion. Those 
hens laid more eggs than any hens I had ever owned in my 




•^ 



Personal Experiences 43 

life. Many times I would get 45 eggs from 50 hens and more 
than once I got 50 eggs. The hens laid month after month, 
but never set. The eggs were of medium size. 

The hens, however, developed a little bowel-trouble, which 
finally caused me to give up this ration. I tried two pens on 
bread soaked in fresh milk instead of the dry bread and milk, 
but the hens soon stopped laying. On going back to the dry 
bread and milk they began to lay again. 

I believe that the feed has everything to do with the laying 
condition of a hen. The more I experimented, the surer I 
became of this fact. I made a success of this place, but not 
through any ability on my part. The hens that were run- 
ning out and laying so well did not eat the mash I gave them, 
but got their food outside. 

I next moved across the bay for a while, but I soon 
obtained another poultry farm and started in again. I 
bought several hundred hens. They were a remarkable lot. 
When I got them they were not laying an egg, and it seemed 
that some of them never took a bite of food. I worked with 
those hens and met one disappointment after another. They 
would eat grit and charcoal, and I tried various foods to stop 
them; I could not, however, supply them with a mixture that 
helped them, and I went from one thing to another without 
success. This went on for a long time, and I finally found 
myself without a cent. 

These hens were the wildest I ever saw in my life; if I 
was in one corner of the block, they were always in the 
other corner and that was the closest I ever got to them. I 
had just read Jack London's book, "The Call of the Wild," 
and I was; sure he got his idea from hens. On reading Mr. 
Hogan's book on the science of breeding and selection, in 
which different types of fowls are classified, I looked to see 
if he had classified this variety. They might have been of 



44 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

the beef type, but they certainly were not of the egg type, 
for -I did not get enough eggs for breakfast. These hens 
were related more to the "Call of the Wild" than to the "Call 
of the Hen." In fact, they were so wild that I called them 
the "wild type," and their wildness seemed to extend to 
everything on the place. My wife grew wild, I grew wild, 
and our's was indeed a wild poultry farm. In fact, things 
grew so wild that the hens flew one way and the home went 
another. Though I make a comedy of my failure, it was in 
reality a tragedy, such as is every home broken by the pov- 
erty which often follows the poultry business. 

Some time after this I met a man who wished me to raise 
poultry for him on shares; I accepted. Of all the deals I 
ever had, this was a'bout the worst. For a brooder and feed- 
house I used an out-building, which, according to this man, 
was everything that it should be. It had a history running 
back to his boyhood days. It was over a cellar, in which 
the water stood six feet deep in winter. The brooder lamp 
of the hot-water-heater was under the floor, and the water 
that stood in the cellar in winter came within about two feet 
of the lamp. To get at the lamp to clean and light it, I had 
to float around in this water on a log. There was a draught 
under the floor and occasionally the lamp would go out. I 
would have to float around on the water to light it. The 
brooder was 3x14 feet. 

The first hatching went all right. I had a very hard time 
getting the owner to put up a building so that there would 
be a place to put the chicks after they got bigger and I 
could have the brooder ready for the next hatching. He 
finally consented, but by the time we got started the next 
hatching came off. I had about 600 chicks three weeks old 
in the. brooder and I had about 600 more just hatched to 
put in the same brooder, which, as I have said, was 3x14 



Personal Experiences 45 

feet in size. I could not get them all in the brooder, and 
when I think of this I wonder how many million of chicks 
die through similar carelessness. 

When it rained the brooder house leaked, and there were 
three inches of water inside of it. I saved the chicks from 
drowning by filling in straw, but it was a terrible mess. We 
were building the other house, and I was arrested for putting 
up a building without a license. After the building was half 
finished, the man I was working for was told that there was 
no money in chickens; someone told him of some people who 
had failed at it, and he wrote to stop all work on the building. 
The building had half a roof on and no front, and I had to 
put 600 little chicks three weeks old out in this shed without 
any warm brooders. It was very cold and the rain was so 
heavy that everything was floating in water. 

I kept up my experiments, and it was here that I first 
noticed what a difference there was in the droppings of my 
poultry between one week and another. I noticed that 
although I would feed these hens dry bran the droppings 
would be large and white, where the others were yellow and 
foamy. I did quite a lot of experimenting then, though 
nothing in particular came of it at the time. It left its impres- 
sion on my mind, however. 

I next received an offer to go to Santa Cruz and put up a 
poultry plant for a man who had just bought a place there. 
When I arrived I was put out to sleep in a shed from which 
they had taken out several dogs. The place was frightful. After 
being there one week, I was ordered out of this place by the for- 
mer owner, as the new owner had no right to the place for 
several months to come, having allowed the former owner 
several months in which to harvest his crops. I went and slept 
out on the banks of the creek in a place they called Happy 
Valley. 



46 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

Walking down the road one day I opened a gate for a 
stranger and his wife who were in a buggy. The man thanked 
me and made some inquiries about the neighborhood. He must 
have noticed my forlorn condition. He asked me where I lived, 
and when I told him he laughed and drove on. Later on he 
returned from the place he had visited, got out, and crept down 
the steep hillside through the dense underbrush to where I was. 
When he reached me he said, "I am not a rich man and have no 
more of this world's goods than I can make use of, but I am 
sure I have more than you and it would please me very much 
to help you." I thanked him and declined his aid. I told him 
that I thought I would come out all right. If that man could 
have only known how my heart was filled with gratitude to him, 
— if he knew how many times in later years I have thought of 
his kindly act, he would have been rewarded in some degree 
for his kindness. By giving kindness you are in fact receiving 
it; it returns to you tenfold. This man, as I afterward found 
out, was a real-estate dealer. 

I had, after a while, a chance to install another poultry farm 
and did so. I had a little better opportunity there to study and 
experiment, and I learned very rapidly. There it was that I 
learned the importance of the variation of grains, and there it 
was that I got the first intelligent understanding of my other 
failures. 

I was carrying on several experiments. In four pens I was 
running as follows: Pen No. 1 received 1 part granulated milk, 
ground fine, to 10 parts of bran, and wheat for grain; Pen No. 
2, 20 parts of bran and 1 part of ground milk, and wheat for 
grain; Pen No. 3, 30 parts of bram and 1 of milk, and wheat 
for grain; and Pen No. 4, 40 parts of bran and 1 of milk, with 
wheat for grain. The hens in Pen No. 1 began to pick up and 
look pretty good; those in Pen No. 2 looked extra good; those 
in Pen No. 3 did not look so well, and in Pen No. 4 they begam 



Personal Experiences 47 

to moult. After running this for three weeks, Pen No. 2 hens 
were in fine condition and from five hens I got about two eggs 
a day. But eggs were not what I was after; I was after health 
and condition. I wanted a foothold, a foundation, to stand on,— 
a method of feeding to which I could return instantly and get 
the same results every time. This would be extremely valuable 
to me, especially when a hen was run down after a prolonged 
experiment. 

Many, many times I thought I had such a method, but it would 
soon prove to be inefficient in one way or another. I tried the 
food I fed to Pen No. 2 on all the other pens, and in a short 
time the hens in these pens looked as well as those in Pen No. 2. 
I wanted to try this out thoroughly, and I fed these hens so that 
they would go down hill rapidly. Then in about a week I would 
return to the feed they got in Pen No. 2. I tried this five times 
on four pens, or twenty experiments in all, and got the same 
results every time. I was now satisfied that I could always 
get the same result by going back to the same feed. 

I then began to make other experiments, as I wished to get the 
droppings just a little stiff er. I used corn in three pens, but to 
my surprise, instead of the droppings getting stiffer, they be- 
came a little looser, although the hens ate a large amount of 
dry mash containing corn. I could not understand this then, 
but a little later it became very simple. One thing that made me 
think was that in the pen where I used wheat, oats and corn 
the hens would fight for corn and would not touch the other 
grain until after the corn was all gone. I did not pay any 
particular attention to this, but a short time later it came to me 
like a flash. I understood the situation; it was a secret to me 
no longer. It takes time to learn, and one has to make a 
great many mistakes before getting things exactly right. 
Many times the same mistake is made over and over again, 
because you do not possess the secret. 



48 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

I now changed the feed to one recommended by an experi- 
ment station, and my hens began to lay well. In a short time, 
however, they would "turn over" — that is to say, they would 
come up to their greatest laying point and then gradually fall 
off. I would then start another pen on the same ration and 
with the same results. I believe that I tried every receipt known 
to the poultry business. I knew there was something wrong, 
but did not know what it was. 

Some of the hens were not looking very good, so I thought I 
would make them brighten up. I started them on the feed I 
had fed to Pen No. 2, which I had tried out by twenty separate 
experiments, but instead of picking up as the others had only 
three of the hens did so. These began to lay nearly every day. 
On exactly the same food the other hens had laid only about 
two eggs a day for five hens. The other two hens in the pen 
continued going down hill very rapidly. 

Here I was getting a different result from what I got in 
every other experiment. Wasn't there any chance of my ever 
learning anything? Was it my fault? Did I know anything at 
all? What was the matter, anyway? 

I now put ten pens on this feed and from these experiments 
I got exactly the same results as I got in my last experiment, 
differing wholly from the results I had from the twenty 
original experiments. In these last experiments the hens that 
were in the best condition would increase in their egg produc- 
tion very rapidly, while the other hens got sick. 

The hens that laid would shortly want to set; I tried this 
food on a large flock of layers, and I was kept on the jump 
picking out setting hens. Every coop on the place was full of 
setting hens. I tried this food several times again, and each 
time it would make my hens set. I have since proved by re- 
peated experiments that food is the cause of making hens set, 
in the face of the fact that only a short time ago a poultry expert, 



Personal Experiences 49 

who travels around the country and who, I believe, is employed 
by the government, wrote an article for a poultry paper, stating 
that food has no effect on making a hen set. I do not wonder 
we advance so slowly when we are put off the right track by 
men who are supposed to know. On another page in the same 
paper was a piece on the same subject by another poultryman, 
whom I had never heard of before. He claimed as I do — that it 
is the food that makes hens set. If the ration is properly bal- 
anced, the hen will lay right along and very seldom set. Such 
was the case when my hens had the bread-and-milk ration. They 
never set, but laid better than any hens I ever owned. If the 
ration is over-balanced, a hen often goes to setting after laying 
only two or three eggs, and you will often notice in feeding 
ready-mixed foods that your hens will lay many eggs but in a 
short time will begin to set, and you will have nothing but 
setting hens on your farm, which is not very profitable. Too 
much protein in the feed- is the cause of this trouble ; it may be 
caused from too much protein in the beef-scrap or too much 
protein in the wheat or bran. It is particularly noticeable that 
a change of bran will cause it. 

The first twenty experiments caused the hens to grow large 
red combs and to continue to keep in good condition, although 
they laid only one egg about every other day. About a month 
later in conducting the same experiments the hens in the best 
condition began for a little while to lay nearly an egg a day, 
and then wanted to set. The hens that were not in such good 
condition became worse during the last ten experiments. The 
hens that were entirely out of condition picked up in the first 
twenty experiments and looked fine. 

No wonder I could never learn anything about the poultry 
business. Wasn't it possible ever to obtain the same results 
when I gave the same feed? Why should a few weeks or a few 
months make any difference, especially in the spring of the 



50 The Truth About the Poultry Business 



hens t 



year? Why, after only a month's time, should I get entirely dif- 
ferent results? Could it be possible that the climate could affect 
hens to such an extent in so short a time ? I could not believe it. 
Found out long ago that the knowledge I needed was not to 
be had in poultry papers, poultry books, or experiment-station 
bulletins. Why didn't they say something about such a case 
as I then had, so that it would benefit me? I could not find 
anything to cover my case, no matter where I looked. Why is 
not something written about these conditions? It seemed to me 
that the papers and books contained everything but what would 
enlighten me and lead me to success. I did not care what Mary 
Smith did; I wanted facts; I wanted to learn. I eagerly read 
everything I could get hold of, but every book was absolutely 
worthless to me. Not one fitted my case. I noted that no two 
books agreed, no two experiment stations recommended the 
same ration, every poultry raiser fed a different ration, and each 
had a different system of feeding. Why was this? Why don't 
they all agree? Is it because each flock of hens require a 
different food? Are the egg-producing organs of one flock 
different from those of another flock on the other side of a 
fence? Why should not all hens be fed the same? Why is it 
that there is no "best" poultry food? Why is it that after years 
of experimenting no two men agree? Why is it that the experi- 
ment stations do not send out the same formulas? And why 
is it that you will often meet a man who has been in the poultry 
business for twenty years or more who says frankly that although 
he tried hard he knows no more about it than the day he started 
in? It is unquestionably true that each experiment station and 
each poultryman is trying to gain the best possible results to 
increase his knowledge and to make the poultry business more 
profitable,^ 

The importance of the food question is entirely underestimated. 
The variations are far greater than they are supposed to be, 



Personal Experiences 51 

and poultrymen either do not understand them or are at a loss 
how to master them. Through a thorough understanding of the 
variations in grains — an understanding which can be obtained 
only after practical experience and experiments — the whole 
secret of the poultry business is laid bare; the method of mak- 
ing hens lay eggs is no longer a mystery. This is the secret of 
why no two men or experiment stations agree and why there 
is no one best poultry food; also, why a man makes a success 
at one place and meets with failure at another. This also ex- 
plains why such different results are obtained from poultry in 
different locations, and why one man will sometimes make a 
success of poultry and yet remain in ignorance of the facts. 

What is food for one may be poison for another, and while 
this is positively true, yet in nearly every case there is an excep- 
tional reason for it. Take my own case, for an example; it may 
be read by some poor human being suffering from the same 
trouble as myself and through my experience he may be able to 
return to the road of health. I was taken with a severe dysen- 
tery and for six months I was very ill. I saw different doctors, 
but nothing did me any good. Then I was advised to take milk 
and nothing else, and for days and days I ate nothing but con- 
densed milk — about two tablespoonfuls to a glass of boiled 
water — and I got well. But the organs were naturally weakened, 
and if I am not careful I become sick immediately. The milk, 
however, works every time. 

Now the same thing happens to a hen. If her organs are 
weakened through a long period of bowel trouble, she will be- 
come sick more easily than another hen that has never been 
weakened. You must be more particular with her food. There 
are foods that will agree with all of us. It is possible to run 
1,000 hens together in one flock and have no sickness among 
them. But the ration must be properly balanced and made of 



52 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

the right ingredients. If your ration is right, the food will be 
food for all and poison to none. 

When I obtained such different results from the last experi- 
ments, I made a careful analysis of my feed and I found that 
the only possible difference there could be was in the bran. I 
had used the bran for the last experiments from a later ship- 
ment from the mills, and I thought that that might be the reason 
of the difference. I got out the sack of bran that I had used 
in the original twenty experiments and it looked exactly like 
the other bran. I mixed up the ration of twenty parts of bran 
and one part of milk and fed it to the five hens which I will 
now call Pen No. 1. Then I mixed up the same ration, using 
the other bran, and fed it to five pens which I will call Pen No. 
2. These pens were fed wheat for grain, and after about ten 
days the fowls in Pen No. 1 looked fine and began to lay, while 
those in Pen No. 2 started to lay but soon began to set. Here 
were two entirely different results obtained from exactly the 
same rations, the only difference being that the brans used 
were from different shipments, although they were exactly 
alike as far as appearance was concerned.^ 

Now, in order to be sure that it was the bran that caused 
these opposite results, I reversed the feed, gave Pen No. 1 
the bran that Pen No. 2 had had, and gave Pen No. 2 the 
bran Pen No. 1 had had. In a short time the Pen No. 1 
hens started to lay and then to set, exactly as the hens in 
Pen No. 2 had done, while hens in Pen No. 2 gradually came 
into fine condition and laid about every other day. I 
repeated these experiments time after time, and would get 
the same results each time. Here at last a light dawned 
upon me — a light from out of the darkness of years. Here 
at last I saw the causes of my other failures; I understood 
at last why I had never been able to make head nor tail of 



Personal Experiences 53 

the poultry business. If I had only known this before, how 
many disappointments in my life would have been avoided! 

I thought now "If this is the cause of my failures, how 
many other failures has it caused?" "Is not one's success in 
the poultry business to be measured by one's knowledge of 
these variations and by one's ability to use them to 
advantage?" 

This is not necessarily true in all cases, because a man may 
sometimes make a success by accident, especially if his hens 
run on soft, rich ground. But are not these variations 
accountable for the fact that when one moves from one place 
to another, using grains differing in protein, one may make 
a failure in one place and succeed in another? Is this not 
the reason that some people do very well in the poultry 
business for a while and then lose money rapidly, so that in 
a short time you see a "For Sale" sign on their property? 
They get grains and feed, a ration recommended by an experi- 
ment station, and the grains they use have about the same 
protein as those used by the station. Later, in a different 
shipment, the grain varies and they do not know why they 
do not get the same results. Such a thing may easily put 
one on the wrong track. One 'begins to feed some other 
kind of feed and keeps on this wrong track until failure 
ensues. At the end they know no more about the poultry 
business than the day they began. 

Is not the existence of such variations the reason why 
some people cannot raise poultry at all, although they closely 
follow the system advocated by the experiment stations? 

Does this not explain why experiment stations do not agree 
on rations, since they may all be working with grains which 
differ in protein? 

Why is there no one best poultry ration? 

Why do no two men feed alike? 



54 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

Does this not explain why there are so many different 
systems of feeding hens? 

Does it not explain many of the mysteries of the poultry 
business? 

Does it not show why your ration is correctly balanced at 
one time and the next time it is not balanced and you obtain 
a different result? 

Does it not explain why some men do not use as much 
meat as others and still get good results? 

Does it not also show why some people raise chicks with- 
out losing more than 5% of them, while the man next door 
loses 95% of his chicks on the same food? They may both 
feed the chicks the same ration and keep dry bran before 
them all the time, but the difference in the bran and wheat 
that each man uses is so great that one man balances his 
ration correctly and the other does not. 

Almost everyone knows the great variations that exist 
between red and white wheat, but the variations I mean 
are found particularly in white brans, exactly similar in 
appearance. 

Do not these variations explain every secret of the feeding 
of poultry? 

Last but not least, do they not explain exactly why men 
who have been in the business from one to fifty years say, 
"I know no more about the business than the day I went into 
it; it seems that I can not learn?" 

This offers an immense field for intelligent men to enter 
and an occupation that is extremely interesting, instructive 
and one which is going to be very profitable. The poultry 
business is in its infancy; its possibilities are enormous, and 
it needs men who will use scientific methods, men who are 
eager to study and to learn. It wants brains, not muscle; 
it requires intelligent application of scientific methods, hard 



Personal Experiences 55 

thinking, not hard working. The work should be made a 
pleasure, not a drudgery. Machinery should work, not men. 

One great fault about the poultry business is that there is 
too much muscle in it now. It is hard work as it is con- 
ducted today and it is not a very encouraging prospect to 
take up. Thirty dollars per month does not look like much 
to most people, 'but by using up-to-date methods, and with 
the feeding of poultry and poultry foods thoroughly under- 
stood, it will not require hard work and the man that can 
get results is going to command a good salary. 
| The difficulty lies in not thoroughly understanding the 
variations in grains. It is this which is responsible for many 
of the failures in the poultry businessV-a fact which is 
clearly shown in this book. I should like to see every man 
who feeds poultry, whether he is on an experiment-station 
farm or on a poultry farm, make investigations along this 
line on his own account. The facts that will be obtained 
will be of enormous benefit to the poultry industry. I believe 
also that the facts so learned will be of inestimable value 
to the human race, because when this problem is thoroughly 
understood mankind will benefit as much from it as will 
poultry; there is not, as a matter of fact, very much difference 
between the two. We put "rocks" in our pockets, whereas 
chickens put them in their gizzards. 

I believe that we are coming to the large intensive poultry 
farm. This seems to be the goal. I believe it will prove to 
be a big success before long. You must creep before you 
can walk, but to operate a large farm successively will require 
intelligent men, hard thinkers with a great deal of experience 
and a thorough understanding of grain variations, feeding 
and housing. If there is such a variation in brans, that 
opposite results will be obtained from their use when all 
other conditions are alike, there must also be just as great 



56 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

a difference in wheat and in all its products. That there is 
a very great difference in wheats is shown by the following 
analysis of nutritive values: 

Bluestem 1:10.0 

Club 1: 9.9 

Chule 1 : 8.8 

Plump 1: 6.9 

Russian red 1 : 6.8 

Shrunken 1 : 4.6 

Shrunken 1 : 6.5 

Turkey red 1 : 6.8 

I do not know what effect the soil has on wheat. Grain 
gets all its nutriment from the soil and soil differs about as 
much as human beings. \lt would seem that the soil must 
have some effect on grains, but that could only be deter- 
mined by analysis.,,;. Mills, in making what is termed "Baker's 
Flour," use a very large percentage of Turkey Red wheat, 
but in making flour for the "family trade" the Bluestem is 
the most used. The nutritive value of Turkey Red is 1:6.8, 
and the nutritive value of Bluestem is 1:10.0. I do know 
that bran from Bluestem wheat has a different effect on hens 
from Turkey Red bran, and the nutritive rations differ greatly. 
One contains more protein than the other, and the Turkey 

Red is non-laxative. . 

Crude protein Starch, sugar, etc 

per cent. per cent. 

Turkey Red 12.20 70.92 

Bluestem 9.00 77.05 

The difference is great. I know this, not from tables, but from 
practical experience. But I do not know what bran it was 
that caused me to obtain such opposite results, for I have 
had to stop experimenting. I hope some day to take this up 
where I left off. 



Personal Experiences 57 

Every mill has its own brand of flour, made from its own 
special blend of grains. Some brans are squeezed more than 
others and contain less flour, so you can see that the varia- 
tions of brans are many. If the poultryman knows of these 
variations, if hel only suspects that they are the cause of his 
failures, he has a great part of his battle won; it is in not 
suspecting the real cause that he loses. Knowing these varia- 
tions, he can learn to balance his rations accordingly, this 
he can learn only through practical experience. When he 
thoroughly understands this he can make a success of the 
poultry business almost any place or in any climate. 

It requires more knowledge to make a success of the poul- 
try business than any other business that I know of. You 
not only have to have the experience, but you must also have 
the capital and you have my sympathy if you tackle it with- 
out either. If you have the capital, you may employ one 
who has the experience. 

In using wheat I use the red wheat, which is soft. In 
California we get a good wheat called Russian Red. I do 
not know that it is any better than the Turkey Red wheat, 
and in fact it may not be as good, but I am more familiar 
with it. 

Remembering how crazy the hens were for corn in some 
of my other experiments and what a large quantity of mash 
they would eat if it contained a little corn meal, I came to 
the conclusion that the reason they ate so much of the mash 
was in order to get the corn that was in it and that the 
reason their droppings became loose was on account of the 
laxative qualities of the bran they were forced to eat in 
order to get the corn. 

Here were hens that wanted nothing 'but corn — quite dif- 
ferent from those beautiful pullets I had years before. 
Remembering how the other hens seemed to be crazy for 



58 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

corn, I began to experiment with corn, and it was then that 
I solved the secret of my failures. It will prevent you from 
following the same road to failure that I followed so faith- 
fully. It points out those rocks I stumbled over and which 
you can now avoid. 

Now I went back to the S Method. I fed Pen No. 1 

two parts bran, one part corn-meal, 10% beef-scrap (ground 
fine), and wheat for grain; Pen No. 2, one part bran, one part 
corn-meal, 10% beef-scrap, and wheat for grain; Pen No. 3, 
one part bran, one part corn-meal, 10% beef-scrap, with 
wheat and corn for grain. Bran running high in protein was 
used. The droppings in Pen No. 1 became very watery in a 
short time, and two of the hens became sick and I had to 
change the feed. Pen No. 2 did fairly well, while in Pen 
No. 3 the hens came into fine condition, the droppings became 
good, and they began to lay the finest, largest eggs I ever 
saw. Here for the first time in many years I was a'ble to 
feed corn at all, and it was the first time I was ever able 
to do so and get eggs. 

At the time I conducted the above experiments I also had 
three pens on exactly the same rations, only I used a differ- 
ent bran — a bran that was low in protein. Pen No. 1 with 
this low protein bran — two parts bran, one part corn-meal, 
and 10% beef-scrap — showed exactly the same condition that 
those fine hens showed years before, exactly the same kind 
of droppings, and all the same results. 

These experiments showed me plainly the causes of my 
failures and my successes. My great trouble had been at 
different places I would get grains and mill feeds which 
varied greatly in the quantity of protein they possessed, and 
as I never suspected this or never understood its real impor- 
tance, I kept landing on the same old rock year after year. 
I would get off the right track, feed wrong feeds, and waste 



Personal Experiences 59 

months and months, experimenting with a variety of foods, 
when all I really required was corn. If I had only known 
enough to stay with bran, corn or middlings, beef-scrap and 
wheat, and had not used false feeds, what a difference there 
would have been in my life! 

I have found that with some grains, though they are scarce, 
more eggs can be obtained without corn and that hens will 
lay well without it, the reason for this I believe to be the 
use of the non-laxative 'bran low in protein. You may add 
more beef-scrap to the ration, get a few more eggs, but you 
will not get the results you would if you used middlings 
instead of corn. You will find most brans run high in protein, 
and when using such bran you will find hens want corn and 
lots of it is absolutely desirable as far as my experience has 
taken me. 

One thing I am positive of: That with some kinds of bran 
and wheat corn is not necessary and results can be obtained 
without it, but with other kinds — and they are in the great 
majority — corn is actually one of the best poultry food 
there is. 

I next accepted the management of another large poultry 
farm where I had a better chance to continue my experi- 
ments. I had no one to bother me, as I had at other places 
where people thought I knew nothing because I experimented 
with a few hens. (I lost more than one place on that 
account). At this place I made a success of a poultry farm 
under the worst possible conditions. It was the worst pos- 
sible location for poultry farming, which was just what I 
needed to show me not only what I wanted to know about 
feeding, 'but also about roup. 

In one poultry house I had about 1,000 hens and I had 
for experimental purposes 100 hens shut up in pens of five 
hens each. I tried the same experiments I made at the place 



60 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

I just left. I tried them over and over again. I would go 
to the mill and get one kind of bran and then another kind — 
also many different kinds of wheat. I was enabled to do this 
because there were different kinds of bran and wheat coming 
to this mill all the time. These experiments were kept up 
for a year, and in that time the truth of my deductions regard- 
ing the variations of grain were proved beyond the possibility 
of a doubt. 

I would increase middlings and oats in the mash, and by 
properly balancing it with beef-scrap I would get many more 
eggs than when I fed only the bran, corn and wheat method. 
The hen in one pen receiving one part of bran, one part of 
corn-meal, one-half part of middlings, one-half part of ground 
oats, and one-half part of beef-scrap laid very well, but in 
a pen having the same feed except for a trifle more meat 
the hens would be knocked down and would be unable to 
get on their feet, like persons suffering from paralysis, and 
would be afflicted in many different ways. 



III. FEEDING 

Hens sometimes lie on their sides and cannot turn over. 
Sometimes they lie on their backs and cannot move, and if 
not provided for will starve to death. Hens will do this on 
some brans with which considerable meat is used, and many- 
rations so effect them. I have found this to be the rule 
where the ration was over-balanced with protein. They 
become helpless, and it is the food that causes this and 
nothing else. 

If it causes these things in fowls, it must also cause human 
beings to be similarly afflicted. Instead, therefore, of using 
drugs, tonics, etc., get down to the real facts. Throw away 
your drugs, get after the truth. Gnawings in your stomach, 
dyspepsia, and such things are all caused by a craving for 
some certain food, and when you find that food you will be 
relieved. If you feel like eating anything, eat it; that is, if 
it is a natural food and not seasoned artificially. Candy, for 
instance, if indulged in continually, will create a craving for 
more, and if this craving is constantly relieved with candy, 
harm will result because candy is an unnatural food. If you 
crave sweets, eat bananas, figs, prunes, oranges, and other 
fruits without seasoning. Eat all you want. They are natural 
foods; they satisfy a natural craving, and no bad effects will 
be felt. 

A hen running out where she can get plenty of bugs, 
worms, grain and green food balances her ration perfectly 
and has no disease; but the moment you shut her up so that 
she no longer gets natural food, the trouble begins. 



62 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

There is no one, no matter how clever, who can feed hens 
or human beings as well as nature can. Nature is greater 
than the mind of man. 

Some particular foods and fruits do not agree with some 
people and should be avoided by them. If you have a con- 
tinued craving for the harmful food, a fruit of the same 
flavor should be tried. If you feel like eating meat, eat it; 
the lack of it may cause a craving, but you must be sure 
that it is not the seasoning you put on it that has caused 
the craving. The Jews, recognizing the harmful results of 
eating pork, do not eat it at all. Years ago on the farm we 
had pork constantly, and it soon showed its effect upon my 
system. I began to have eruptions and boils and this con- 
tinued for years. All the humiliations I have experienced 
through my failures in the poultry business do not compare 
with the suffering I went through as a result of eating too 
much pork. Pork causes eruptions and is very bad for 
eczema, etc. I was looked upon as something to be shunned 
or as though I was a sufferer from leprosy or from some 
other dreadful disease. I went to many doctors; I took this 
blood purifier and that, first one thing and then another. 
This went along for years until I finally began to believe 
it was due to pork; I stopped eating it and I got well without 
any medicine. 

Take a hen that is running out on soft ground where she 
can scratch and get plenty of bugs and worms and excellent 
results will be obtained by giving her a sack of wheat, oats 
and corn, which are natural foods. She obtains other natural 
foods in the ground and her instinct tells her what to eat. 
She knows far more about it than we do, and if we attempt 
to shut her up/ and put the grains in a sack in front of her, 
she, being unable to obtain her other natural foods, will 




3 *!3 



u-S 







by; c, 






Feeding 63 

cease to lay. Her instinct is blunted by the unnatural food. 
We must balance her ration for her, and do it properly if 
we ever expect to succeed. The only way we can learn this 
is by carefully observing the effect different foods have upon 
hens under different conditions. 

If you wish to learn the business get fifty or one hundred 
healthy hens and experiment upon groups of five placed in 
pens. By doing this you will get experience at the lowest 
possible cost. There is no danger of your losing much money 
in this way, and you will thus find out whether or not you 
want to go into the poultry business. Read this book care- 
fully and do not get on wrong roads and lose time thereby. 
Keep your ration as simple as possible. 

I have taken charge of many places where the hens were 
in bad condition. All had bowel trouble and hundreds of 
them would remain on the roost all day and refuse to eat. 
Such hens are the kind that I like to work with, although it 
may be very discouraging, for one can learn from them 
things that never can be learned from hens in good condition. 
You think the food has nothing to do with their condition, 
but turn them out where there is plenty of bugs, grain and 
green food, and before you know it they are laying and as 
healthy as any hens you ever saw. 

Learn all you possibly can about feeding a simple ration. 
You will find enough variations in grains without going after 
them in the form of different foods. Have several pens on 
the same food and run your experiments until you are able 
to see the exact results that each change brings. Notice the 
condition of each hen in every pen. When you change the 
food remember her condition if you possibly can, as she may 
not be in the same condition W the other hens and it may 
take her longer to come into condition. 



64 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

If the reader will follow me carefully, I will take him 
through fifteen years of experimenting in a few pages. 

The first experiments will be on hens in good condition, 
and the last experiments will be with hens that are out of 
condition. This will give him an idea of the difficulties of 
the poultry business and will be of the greatest value to those 
who are trying to make a success of it. 

It is not enough that poultry books should say "use lots 
of common-sense in feeding poultry" or recommend such 
and such a grain for hens. Writers say that a little of this 
grain andi a little of that is good for a hen, but such advice 
is worthless, for adding or taking away a half part of meat 
(in such a ration as No. 9, given below) when you are feed- 
ing, say, 6V2 parts of mash to one of meat, or changing to a 
different brand of beef-scrap or mill-feeds or grains, or chang- 
ing the ground grains in the mash constitutes the difference 
between success and failure. You have to be very particular; 
one part more or less makes a great difference in many 
rations. 

We shall now start out with directions for experimenting 
on hens in small numbers — five hens to a pen. As there is 
no perfect ration in existence for all locations, climates, and 
conditions of hens, we wish to know the faults of each 
ration, how each acts on hens in poor condition as well as 
on those in good condition. We shall state these faults after 
each formula, so that you can take advantage of the knowl- 
edge thus supplied, and if you go into the business and 
encounter certain troubles you will know what causes them 
and how to correct them. 

In starting to experiment we must have a foundation feed 
to work from. All rations are measured, not weighed. 



Feeding 65 

RATION NO. 1 

(Foundation Ration for Experimental Purposes Only.) 

1 part of bran, 

1 part of corn-meal, 

10% of beef-scrap, 

Wheat and corn for grain; green food. 

Faults and Good Qualities of Ration No. 1. — When this 
ration is fed to hens in flocks, a large number of them will 
stand around after a few days and not care for grain, espe- 
cially if they are in bad condition. When hens have watery 
droppings of a grayish-white or creamy color, or white 
diarrhoea, this food is bad for them. But if the hens have 
no bowel-trouble this food will put them in good condition, 
especially if they have been fed a strictly wheat ration, and 
the droppings will be tight with very little, yellow. The eggs 
will be very large, will have 'a fine flavor and a large yellow 
yolk. 

When experimenting, we should not return to this ration 
in case we have poor digestion, very watery droppings or 
real white diarrhoea, in which case we should feed ration 
No. 11. 

We shall start five pens oflfive hens each on ration No. 1, 
and in each pen we shall use one part more of meat. The 
pen getting the most meat will be getting six parts of mash 
to one of meat, and the pen getting the most mash will be 
getting ten parts of mash to one of meat. We shall continue 
these experiments for three weeks. 

The hens getting the most meat may lay the most eggs, 
but the hens getting the least meat will be in the best condi- 
tion. Although they will not lay many eggs, the yolks will 
be yellow and the eggs will be very large. Even with this 



66 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

heavy corn feed there will be no soft-shelled eggs if the bran 
is rich in protein. Hens will lay about 50% on ration No. 1. 
When beginning to feed this ration the hens may be influ- 
enced by the ration they had before, and go after the corn 
greedily at first; but after a couple of weeks you will find 
that they prefer the wheat. If we are using a very heavy 
or a low-protein bran, the hens may become fat. Ten per 
cent of beef-scrap in ration No. 1 is low. 

EATION NO. 2 

2 parts of bran, 

1 part of corn-meal, 

10% of beef-scrap, 

Wheat and corn for grain; green food. 

Faults and Good Qualities of Ration No. 2. — This ration is 
very apt to produce watery droppings when a laxative bran 
is used and digestion is bad. With some grains and with 
certain conditions of hens, if the droppings become watery 
and the ration is continued, it may result seriously. With 
some grains and brans this food will cause the droppings 
to be large and white; the hens will be entirely free from 
bowel troubles and remarkably healthy. Under those condi- 
tions wheat for grain can be very successfully used. The 
condition a hen is in must also be taken into consideration 
when feeding any ration, as some hens' droppings will remain 
good with considerable abuse, while other hens are easily 
affected by the slightest change. Hens will lay about 70% 
on ration No. 2. Using 10% of beef-scrap in ration No. 2 
is high, and probably a little less should be used when feeding 
five quarts of grain to 100 hens. 



Feeding 67 

RATION NO. 3 

1 part bran, 

1 part corn-meal, 

1 part middlings, 

IVi parts mash to 1 of beef-scrap, 
Wheat and corn for grain; green food. 

Faults and Good Qualities of Ration No. 3. — This is a 
heavy ration and is not as good a ration to return to in case 
of bowel-trouble as ration No. 7 (which see below ; neither 
will it start hens to laying as quickly as > No. 7, although it 
is a good laying ration. The amount of beef-scrap is about 
right. In experimenting on these five pens we shall use one 
part more meat in each. The hens getting the most meat 
(six parts of mash to one of meat) will act as though getting 
too much meat. They will be inclined to go to the nest 
frequently without laying, and there may be more bowel- 
trouble than usual. The hens getting only 10% of meat do 
not lay very many eggs, while the hens getting about 7% 
parts of mash to 1 of meat do the best. The hens will lay 
about 65% of eggs on ration No. 3. 

RATION NO. 4 

2 parts bran, 

1 part corn-meal, 

1 part middlings, 

10% beef-scrap, 

Wheat and corn for grain; green food. 

Faults and Good Qualities of Ration No. 4. — This is a most 
excellent ration when fed with the right grains. It is not as 
good a ration as No. 7 under all conditions. The amount of 
beef-scrap given is about right, although it may be a little 
high with some grains. In the five pens we shall use from 
seven to twelve parts of mash to one of meat. The hens get- 



68 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

ting seven parts parts of mash to one of meat we soon find 
are getting too much meat, because the hens that are in 
laying or near laying condition are inclined to go the nest 
frequently, although this is not always the case. The hens 
getting 10% of meat do the best. There is not much bowel- 
trouble on this ration if digestion is good and hens will lay 
about 70%. 

RATION NO. 5 

2 parts bran, 

1 part middlings, 

10% beef-scrap, 

Wheat and corn for grain; green food. 

Faults and Good Qualities of Ration No. 5. — This ration, 
if fed to hens in bad condition, will cause them to have con- 
siderable bowel-trouble, with yellow droppings. When hens 
have indigestion it is a very hard ration to depend on, as 
the hens may eat grits, etc., in quantities and refuse to lay. 
If flour middlings from red wheat are used, and the hens' 
digestion good, the hens will often lay 70% of eggs a day. 
With some grains and conditions of hens this ration can be 
used, but as a rule it is not a very good ration. Ten per cent 
of beef-scrap is high, and probably 8% of meat should be 
used. This, however, depends upon the variations in grains. 

RATION NO. 6 
1 part bran, 
1 part middlings, 
1 part shorts, 
10% beef-scrap, 
Wheat for grain; green food. 

Faults and Good Qualities of Ration No. 6. — This ration, 
like the others, if fed to hens with poor digestion, will cause 



Feeding 69 

a large amount of bowel-trouble. Many times a hen will 
not lay on a strictly wheat ration of this kind when she has 
poor digestion, but by adding a little corn they sometimes 
begin. Ten parts of mash to one of meat is about right if 
a limited amount of grain is used. Hens will lay about the 
same as they do on ration No. 5, but the amount will vary 
on all these rations because some people will balance them 
more correctly than others and because of the difference in 
grains, in the condition of flocks and various outside condi- 
tions. 

RATION NO. 7 

1 part bran, 

1 part shorts, 

1 part middlings, 

1 part whole yellow corn, ground fine, 

10% beef-scrap, ground fine, 

Wheat or wheat and corn for grain; green feed. 

Faults and Good Qualities of Ration No. 7. — Where bran 
and middlings are used and it is desirable to use mostly 
wheat this ration is the best given. It is hard to get a better 
wheat ration than this and I believe it is used by more 
poultrymen than any other ration. 

Some poultrymen use a ration of 1 part of bran, 2 parts 
of shorts and 1 part of corn-meal. Many poultrymen vary 
ration No. 7 one way or the other but no better combination 
on these grains can be made than the one given in this 
ration. 

The reason there are so many variations made is due to 
the variations in grains and conditions of hens. 

If 10% to 12% of bone meal is used in the mash con- 
tinually it will often prevent the hens from any tendency 
there may be to over eat. 



70 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

Do not change from one ration to another. Ration No. 7 
is as good as any ration that is made up mostly of mill feeds. 
Learn to feed it correctly. Hens will lay about 70% on 
ration No. 7. 

RATION NO. 8 

1 part bran, 

1 part of corn-meal, 

1 part of ground oats, 

7% parts of mash to 1 of beef-scrap, 

Wheat and corn for grain; green food. 

Faults and Good Qualities of Ration No. 8. — This is a good 
ration when hens are not troubled with indigestion. In case 
the droppings are watery this is not a very good ration to 
use. 

The comments on ration No. 3 will answer very well for 
ration No. 8. The only difference is that with No. 8 the 
eggs are sometimes a trifle larger, but this does not always 
hold good. After we have tried these experiments carefully, 
we shall now return to our foundation ration (No. 1) for 
about 10 days or until our hens begin to tire of corn. Then 
we shall feed the following: 

RATION NO. 9 
("The Egg-a-Day Ration") 
1 part bran, 
1 part corn-meal, 
% part middlings, 

y 2 part coarse (%. if fine), ground oats, 
7 parts mash to 1 of beef-scrap, 
Wheat and corn for grain; green feed. 

Faults and Good Qualities of Ration No. 9. — This ration, 
when fed to hens in very bad condition and in some loca- 



Feeding 71 

tions and circumstances, may cause the droppings to become 
watery and be of a grayish-white or cream color. Under 
these conditions the hens will not lay to amount to anything, 
and instead of getting an egg a day you would not get an 
tgg a month. When hens are out of condition, with indiges- 
tion, it is not very easy to make them lay on any ration, but 
there is no reason for them to be very much out of condition 
if they have been raised on Ration No. 14. When hens have 
watery droppings return to Ration No. 11, and they will 
become well. What they needed was the right ration, not 
drugs, because it was probably the combination that caused 
the trouble. Remove the cause; do not add some drug. When 
beginning to feed this ration, those people who do not think 
that feed is as important as I say it is should watch these 
hens very closely and see the wonderful change that takes 
place in their cravings and appetite. When you observe this, 
you will realize how important little changes are, and how 
much science there is in feeding hens. If the hens know the 
value of wheat and corn you will see that where before they 
did not care for corn they will now fight for it, especially 
in the pens getting the most meat, although nothing has 
been added to the mash but one-third of oats and middlings. 
It is important to know this when feeding large flocks, for 
you know just what craving a certain combination of grains 
will create, and how to take advantage of that fact. 

By these experiments we find what a wonderful effect little 
changes have upon the hens, and understand how poultrymen 
continually work in the dark, blunder on in blindness, and 
never learn. We find out the technical points of value and 
get down to the practical and scientific points of feeding. 

You see how many people continue to make a failure of 
the poultry business, and the value of these experiments is 
that I have showed you in a very few lines how a very slight 



72 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

change in the food has created a craving in the hen for corn. 
To discover this one little point took me years, during which 
time I made thousands of experiments. These "little things" 
shed light on the mysteries of feeding and enable the poultry- 
man to come out of the darkness and into the light. 

We find that in the pen getting 10% of meat, the hens lay 
fairly well, while the hens getting about 7 parts of mash 
to 1 part of beef-scrap lay an abundance of large yellow- 
yolked eggs. So well do hens lay on this ration (No. 9) 
that those which test very high as layers and have the 
capacity to lay an egg a day will do so on this ration. I 
call it therefore the »"Egg-a-Day Ration." But it has to be 
balanced perfectly, and all conditions must be perfect, in 
order that this may be done. 

Hens out of condition do not eat as much mash as the 
laying hens, and therefore get less protein, which is proper. 
Under such conditions a hen will come into a laying condi- 
tion more quickly than she otherwise would. When a hen 
begins to lay on Ration No. 9 her appetite increases enor- 
mously and she will eat from two to four times as much mash 
as she did before — depending on how correctly balanced the 
ration is. 

If she is in good condition and all conditions are right, she 
will be free from bowel-trouble, and she will be healthy as 
it is possible for a hen to be. By keeping the right food at 
the right balance, your hens will be good for several years, 
although one-half part of meat added to the ration may so 
overbalance it that hens will be gradually weakened and in a 
year or so will die — not from laying themselves to death, 
but from a badly-balanced ration. 

Rations No. 14 or No. 9, balanced correctly, and when 
conditions are right, will keep hens healthy for years, and 
the more eggs they lay the healthier they will be. Many 



Feeding 73 

poultrymen claim that they get all there is from a hen the 
first year, but I think they are mistaken, as I am sure that 
by the feeding of an unbalanced ration they ruin a hen in a 
year and she is good for nothing after that. Moreover, I 
have made experiments on hens three and four years old and 
got an abundance of eggs from them. 

It is impossible to get all the eggs from a hen the first 
year, and it is very easy to ruin the very best of hens in one 
year by wrong feeding. Hens will lay about 80% on Ration 
No. 9, and I have had as many as four and five eggs a day 
from five hens. 

Under some conditions where I used this ration it has given 
me better results than any other. The hens were in fine con- 
dition, had no bowel-trouble and laid very heavily. At other 
locations, however, I have not been able to get as good 
results with Ration No. 9 as with Ration No. 14. Hens fed 
6 parts of mash to 1 of meat will lay a very large number of 
eggs at first if they are in good condition; otherwise, it may 
kill some of the weaker ones, and while they will probably 
lay a larger number of eggs at first, the eggs will in a short 
time get smaller and the hens will be inclined to set, and 
some of them will be "knocked off their feet." This is the 
case where the bran is high in protein. 

RATION NO. 10 
1 part bran, 
1 part corn-meal, 
1 part middlings, 
1 part coarse ground oats, 
7 parts mash to 1 of beef-scrap, 
Wheat and corn for grain; green feed. 

Faults and Good Qualities of Ration No. 10. — In the experi- 
ments I have made with Ration No. 10 I have found that 



74 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

hens are more apt to have watery droppings and white 
diarrhoea, especially if a little flour is added to the ration, 
than they are on Ration No. 9. But it is possible that 
other conditions were to blame, and the results I obtained 
were misleading. When hens are in good condition and 
other conditions are favorable, this ration will produce an 
abundance of large, yellow-yolked eggs, and the hens will 
lay about the same as on Ration No. 9. 

When feeding this ration, if one-fourth part of low-grade 
baker's flour is used it will increase the size of the eggs. 
Many poultrymen consider Rations No. 9 and No. 10 too 
heavy. All that is necessary to obtain a lighter ration is to 
add a high-protein bran. You can thus make the ration as 
light as is desirable without having to change any of the 
other ingredients. 

I have found that one part of meat to twenty parts of bran 
is all that some brans need for a correct balance that will 
make a hen lay. Therefore where we use seven parts of 
mash (No. 9) to one of meat, we do not need to add any 
more meat but simply add a little bran, unless we are already 
using too much bran, say, four or five parts to one of mash. 

We have now experimented on hens with the best rations 
and, it must be remembered, we have experimented on healthy 
hens only and have shown the best results from the rations 
given. Let us now get to work on hens with indigestion, in 
bad condition, and show the bad results of the same rations. 

Let us say we have been feeding Ration No. 9 and we are 
getting an abundance of eggs on this feed. We naturally 
think, therefore, that we know something about the poultry 
business, and so we get a flock of hens and start in in earnest. 
These hens are in bad condition when we get them, or 
become so shortly afterwards. They have bowel-trouble; 
many of them stand around and when you go to feed them 



Feeding 75 

they are not very hungry (hens should be very hungry all 
the time when fed Ration No. 14 or No. 9). Many of them 
remain on the roosts all night and all day. (No matter how 
good a flock of chickens the novice in the poultry business 
buys and whatever their sex, by inexperience and wrong 
feeding he will turn them in a short time into roosters). 

We shall start feeding these hens on the Foundation 
Ration No. 1. We have about 1,000 hens in this flock, and 
we see that after the second day a large number of them 
refuse to eat grain and stand around. We find out that 
while Ration No. 1 worked well with a small pen of hens 
with good digestion it is worthless on a large flock with 
poor digestion, and so we shall go to Ration No. 2. We 
feed this ration for a short time, but the grain we are using 
is inclined to be laxative and we find some of the droppings 
are very watery. If we continue this feed, it will result 
seriously to many hens. We notice that the hens in the 
worst condition have bowel-trouble, inclining to white- 
diarrhoea. 

Watery droppings and white-diarrhoea are not the same, 
and we must not get the two confused. 

We now change to Ration No. 5 and the watery droppings 
are not so bad, yet the condition is not so good as if we 
used Ration No. 7. We are not getting many eggs and, read- 
ing where some poultrymen force their hens to lay by using 
a large amount of meat, or, as the experts say, "Run their 
hens at high pressure" (misleading terms, since they give 
the impression that one can force a hen to lay, when the 
fact is that one cannot do so). We feed six parts of mash 
to one of meat, using Ration No. 5, and try to force them 
to lay. We "run them at high pressure," and before we 
know it many of our hens begin to die and some act as 
though the food were turning them inside out. They eat 



76 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

glass, rocks, bone-meal and charcoal by the sack, and the 
droppings are yellow, mushy and foamy. We quickly find 
out that instead of forcing them to lay eggs, we force them 
to lay very quietly, forever. The "high pressure" we have 
on them consists of the amount of dirt we have on top of 
them; the higher the dirt, the higher the pressure. 

As our hens are in bad condition, we try this cure and 
that, different feeds, etc., but the more variations we try 
the worse off our hens become. Now we read that it is all 
in the stock, and we come to the conclusion that our hens 
are poor stock or that they must be of the "beef type," since 
we never get any eggs from them. 

We start out to find some good stock of the "egg type." 
We buy 1,000 hens, and there is no question about these 
being of good, healthy stock and excellent layers, because 
when we received them each hen was the picture of health 
and laying regularly. We are willing to pay a high price 
for these hens, as it is in the late fall — and eggs are high 
and the hens are through moulting. We start in to feed 
Ration No. 9 because some one told us that it was a good 
ration for laying hens. We are going to be on the safe 
side, and feed them about eight parts of mash to one of 
meat, but the hens drop off in their laying. Now we try 
to force them to lay. We add beef-scrap, using six parts of 
mash to one of meat. We get a few more eggs at first, but 
if there were a few weak hens among them these weak hens 
gradually become weaker and die. We now see we are 
using too much meat, and we cut it down, using ten parts of 
mash to one of meat. In about a week or so the hens begin 
to stop laying, and we notice feathers on the dropping- 
boards. A few days later the feathers of the neck begin to 
thin out and we notice new feathers growing in. Now we 
know that our hens are moulting, and we think the man 



Feeding 77 

who sold them to us did not tell us the truth. The fact of 
the matter is, we have made the hens moult the second 
time by changing from a ration high in protein to one low 
in protein. On many poultry farms hens are kept continually 
moulting for four or five months by wrong feeding. 

After a short time our hens become weak, and we think 
the hens we bought were not of very good stock after all 
and we buy no more hens or chicks from the same man. 
The fact is we ruined the flock by wrong feeding, which will 
turn the finest kind of hens into poor hens. Do not blame 
the stock when the feed is at fault. 

We will say that you started in feeding Ration No. 9. 
Your hens show watery droppings, and start to eat grit, etc. 
You do not know what to do. Knowing that middlings and 
flour are constipating, you add these. But they will not stop 
the trouble; sometimes they make it worse and produce 
white-diarrhoea. Then we add a little bran and it does not 
work well. Now we add oats and that seems to make them 
worse. We read where Conboie says "if hens eat grit or 
want corn very badly, give them plenty of corn." We cut 
out the wheat and give them nothing but corn for grain. 
They are very eager for it, but here the hens are misled, 
for the craving is caused by the meat, or they have indiges- 
tion, and we find that the more oats and corn we give them 
the worse off they will be. We come to the conclusion, 
therefore, that corn is not good for poultry. 

It is instances like this that cause people to form an 
opinion of a grain and hold it forever afterwards. But the 
trouble is that the grain was used when conditions were 
such that the worst results would be obtained. When hens 
have watery droppings that are very slimy and of a grayish- 
white or creamy color, oats are very bad, nor should corn 
in excess of what is in Ration No. 7 be used. When hens 



78 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

have real white-diarrhoea, corn is the worst thing that can 
be fed to them. When hens have very watery droppings 
a ration like No. 14, in which Turkey Red bran is used, will 
sometimes stop the trouble. In extreme cases use Ration 
No. 11. 

It is very hard to find the trouble, as it can be caused by a 
laxative bran, laxative wheat, middlings, (especially flour 
middlings) oats, poor corn, cabbage or green food, or it may 
be a simple case of indigestion. 

It is better to know what effect different grains have on 
the hens under different conditions than to know any receipt, 
as the variations in grains, outside conditions, and conditions 
of flocks may require the slight changing of a ration. 

If we notice the hens closely at times we find that some 
of them are constipated, but after a short time their drop- 
pings become watery, and we think they need drugs. What 
they actually want is to be cured of indigestion by a system 
of feeding. When everything is right you can use Ration 
No. 9 and get a large number of eggs. 

When feeding hens or chickens, wheat can be used for 
grain, instead of wheat and corn, if there is no bowel-trouble; 
but better results can usually be obtained by using wheat 
and corn for grain. Many people starting into the poultry 
business know nothing about these troubles, which they must 
^meet and overcome. They start in the business blindly, 
without anything to guide them. They never learn, because 
when hens are out of condition certain grains will kill them, 
whereas if they are in good condition these grains would 
keep them in the best of health. 

By keeping your ration very close to No. 14 or No. 9, and 
not varying it over one-half a part or so at a time, you can 
make v little changes in ^he "'ration without causing the hen 
to- sto?pj laying. The right ■$/)& Xo change the food is to sepa- 



Feeding 79 

rate the layers from the non-layers, and you can make the 
non-layers lay without affecting the layers. If part of your 
flock should have bowel-trouble, you will generally find that 
it is the weaker or non-laying hens. By separating the non- 
layers and by making the proper change in the ration, you 
will put them in good condition. 

If your hens have white-diarrhoea feed them the following 
ration: 

EATION NO. 11 

2 parts coarse Turkey Red bran, 
1 part Ration No. 14, 
5% beef-scrap, 
Wheat only for grain. 

If a sudden change is made to this ration from a heavy 
ration like No. 9 or No. 10 in the fall or early spring it will 
cause some of the hens to moult. But a slight moult is 
better than a lot of dead hens. 

Hens suffering from white-diarrrhoea will not eat corn 
after a short time if other grains are to be had. Watch them 
carefully when they have this trouble and give them wheat 
and corn, and you will find that in a short time they will 
refuse the corn and go after the wheat, that is providing 
the rations is not too heavily balanced with protein, in which 
case the hen may go after the corn in spite of her trouble. 

Hens fed on Ration No. 10 are liable to white-diarrhoea 
if- the corn is not good and with some brans and middlings 
and conditions of hens. 

Bowel-trouble is caused by the ingredients in the food 
being of the wrong kind and is the worst enemy you have to 
contend with. You will not have very much bowel-trouble 
using Rations 9 and 14. 



80 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

Of the one thousand pullets I had in the oak grove, not 
one of them had bowel-trouble. They had no medicine of 
any kind and they were confined in a very small space and 
had no food but what I gave them. When they were pullets 

they were fed on the S Method, except that they had a 

straight wheat ration for grain, and at night they were fed 
all the wheat they could eat. The B., B. & B. used contained 
one-half bone meal. 

In making up rations measure the parts carefully, and these 
rations are mixed to measure, not weighed. 

The percentage of beef-scrap in these rations is about right 
if 5 quarts of grain a day is fed to 100 hens, but as this may 
not be the better method and more grain is fed the beef- 
scrap should be increased. The grain should be thrown on 
top of the litter. Shavings from 12 to 18 inches deep is 
very good. 

Feed the grain about 8 A. M. and 4 P. M. if feeding 5 quarts 
to 100 hens. 

Use alfalfa or clover, etc., for green feed if possible. 

When hens and chicks are suffering from white-diarrhoea, 
etc., I believe best results will be obtained by leaving out the 
green feed, for a while at least. 

In running some of these experiments you may not get 
exactly the same results as I have described: You may have 
conditions that I have not had. Be very careful in your 
feeding and in changing the feed. You may think that a 
little change will not have any effect on the hen, but it does; 
a change however small has its effect. That is why so many 
people fail; they do not see these "little things," which are 
the most important of all. They stay in the same old rut 
as long as they are in the poultry business. We can all see 
the big things, but very few of us have the patience to hunt 
out the small ones, because they are very hard to find. 



Feeding 81 

Many people use the hard Turkey Red wheat and pay 
more for it because it contains more protein. They also use 
the heavy bran. 

In buying corn-meal, be sure it is old whole corn, ground 
very fine, and not meal sifted from cracked corn, which is 
lighter in color, but I have seen it made yellow by grinding 
and mixing with it the yellow hulls. 

In buying shorts, see that what you get is shorts and not 
fine ground bran. 

Try to get the same kind of grains and mill feeds all the 
time. 

Hens sometimes get very fat on a ration in which a great 
deal of corn and meat is used if the bran is low in protein 
and the middlings very rich, or when much low-grade flour 
is used. It is generally one of these things that causes hens 
to lay soft-shelled eggs. 

Hens often go after one thing eagerly at first and then 
change. They crave something to balance their ration at 
first, and go after it greedily, but this over-balances their 
ration and they quickly get tired of it. 

A sudden change from a heavy ration like No. 9 to a light 
ration like No. 4, or from a ration high in protein like No. 9 
to a ration low in protein like No. 1 is very apt to cause a 
moult in the fall or winter. 

When hens are fed a ration of bran, middlings, beef-scrap 
and wheat when there is much bowel-trouble, if the ration 
is over-balanced with meat it creates an intense craving for 
something that will balance this, just as there may be a 
craving in youf stomach caused by your eating continuously 
a ration that does not balance. 

If the hen cannot find a food to balance her ration, she 
will eat dirt, grit, glass, granulated bone and charcoal in 
quantities, just as a healthy hen will eat grain. Under such 



82 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

conditions if it is corn or wheat she needs and she is given 
all she wants of these grains, the craving will stop and she 
will eat no more dirt. 

You must be very careful in feeding new corn, as new corn 
when ground spoils very quickly. 

In experimenting you must use hens that know the value 
of corn as well as wheat. If they do not, you must give them 
time to learn or you will not learn anything from them. I 
have had some hens in flocks go for two months without 
eating corn, as they did not know what it was. But as soon 
as they did know they would fight for it. 

Be sure always to keep grit of the proper size, shells, 
granulated bone-meal and charcoal in boxes. The hens prefer 
the coarse granulated charcoal. 

Use corn-meal ground very fine and from good whole yel- 
low corn. The beef-scrap should be the best and ground 
very fine. Use Russian Red wheat and good whole yellow 
corn. Mix these two grains together carefully and use them 
for almost all the grain feeds (equal parts of wheat and whole 
yellow corn) when limiting the grain. 

The cracked corn is probably better, as all the hens get an 
equal share, but if care is used in scattering the corn, the 10c 
per hundred that the mills charge for cracking it can be 
saved. 

At some places poultrymen prefer the Turkey Red wheat, 
as it contains more protein, and they pay a larger price for it. 
They prefer the heavy brans that contain a large amount of 
flour, but I have had very good results with Russian Red 
wheat. 

In feeding you have different climates to be taken into 
consideration, different waters, different soils, a very great 
difference in the conditions of flocks — all of which things have 
more or less effect on the feeding. 



Feeding 83 

One great trouble with the poultry business is that the 
successes are pointed out, and the failures are allowed to 
pass unmentioned, but I believe that the failures are as 
important as the successes. You want to know why this man 
failed and why the other man failed, but you will never see 
in any poultry book an account of such failures. 

In many localities you will hear it said that the hens are 
deteriorating and that they need new blood, but the fact is 
that by wrong feeding and constant bowel-trouble the hens 
are gradually weakened and killed. There is nothing the 
matter with the hens; the trouble is in the feed. 

It is generally believed that any one can feed poultry, and 
millions of dollars are lost yearly through that mistaken 
belief. 

An improperly balanced ration causes bowel-trouble or 
creates a craving, which if not satisfied will cause serious 
results, as will also many combinations of food. I have fed 
laying hens on chick-food for quite a while and they laid 
very well on it, as some chick-foods contain enough protein 
to keep a hen laying. 

A mistake in not balancing a ration for hens may not 
always result in serious trouble, but a mistake in not properly 
balancing the ration for chicks either proves fatal or so 
injures the chick that they are set back and sometimes never 
amount to anything. 

Baby chicks that develop leg weakness are victims of an 
unbalanced ration and over-feeding. The knowledge you gain 
from experimenting with hens is very valuable in raising 
baby chicks. 

I have given ten rations for making hens lay, and could go 
on indefinitely giving ration after ration, all of which I have 
used with more or less success, providing I used the right 
grains — the right grade of those grains — and the right 



84 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

amount of grains. Grains should be used according to their 
laxative and constipating qualities. Brans from the same 
wheat may vary a little in their laxative qualities. Brans 
from some grains are laxative, while brans from others are 
not. Middlings are constipating — some far more than others 
— and differ much more than brans. Some middlings, like 
some brans, are not as good for fowls as others. Grade 
No. 2 of middlings are often nothing but shorts, and flour 
middlings often produce watery droppings. Always use mid- 
dlings No. 1 that are not shorts or flour. If you use shorts, 
buy them; but do not pay middling prices for them. 

To make hens lay, the ration should be accurately bal- 
anced with protein, which is supplied with either meat or 
milk. A rich food, such as corn must be supplied, for it 
must be remembered that the richest part of the wheat (the 
flour) is not contained in the bran and middlings. Corn is 
a heavy constipating food when the very best grade is used, 
but when the best grade is not used it produces bowel- 
trouble, watery droppings and white-diarrhoea. The best 
grade of whole yellow corn is the best poultry food, regard- 
less of the season of the year. When it is not of the best 
grade, or where corn-meal is used that is sifted from cracked 
corn, it kills more chicks and causes more bowel-trouble 
among hens than all other causes combined. 

Oats are always classed as laxative, for they often cause 
the droppings to become watery, and if a large amount are 
fed to chicks they will occasionally cause a watery or pasty 
dropping similar to white-diarrhoea. My experience with 
oats and middlings is that they are constipating, but when 
used under some conditions they are laxative. Use the large, 
heavy white oats; light oats that are nothing but hulls are 
worthless. These statements are made to show you that 
you must use the greatest care in selecting your mill feeds — 



Feeding 85 

especially corn and middlings — as almost everything, from 
bran to flour, is sold as middlings. 

I feed poultry of all ages about the same ration, except the 
first few weeks I do not feed baby chicks any meat because 
if the mash should not be exactly right, they will be better 
off without meat. I have raised fine, healthy chicks that 
never tasted meat for the first two months. The earlier they 
get meat the faster the grow. 

I will use baby chicks for illustration — as they are the most 
sensitive to proper or improper feeds, and we get quicker 
results one way or the other. I will begin by feeding baby 
chicks chick-foods composed of seeds and grains. These 
chicks are in good condition, and the chick food is the best 
that money can buy. I feed these chicks five times a day 
in fine chopped straw, (I use coarse planer shavings in the 
yards) and to be sure that they all get enough I give them 
all that I think they will eat up quickly. Here is where I 
make a mistake whereby I kill my chicks because I think I 
have fed the right amount, and no two persons think in the 
same quality. At the next feeding time the chicks are hungry 
and I feed about twice the amount I gave before and keep 
that up. Next day my chicks do not seem to be so active 
and about the fourth day they begin looking weak, many of 
them so weak on their legs that they cannot stand up. About 
the fifth day half of them die, and the remainder die in a 
few days. At one place I lost five hatches of chicks, 1,000 
chicks to each hatch, making a total of 5,000 chicks in all 
and near me on another place, another party lost 23,000 chicks 
in the same way. 

My chicks nearly all died on the fifth day, and I thought 
they were poisoned because little stools of blood were passed; 
but what really killed them was over-feeding with grains. 
They ate more than they could digest, some of the food 



86 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

souring before digesting. An intense craving for something 
developed, the chicks ate a large amount of sharp, fine grit — 
exactly as a hen might — and this cut their bowels and caused 
the passing of blood. Chicks will eat dirt, sawdust and any- 
thing they can get under such conditions, and eating sawdust 
has caused the loss of many a flock of chicks without the 
owner ever discovering the cause. 

A good chick-feed fed by an experienced poultryman, who 
understands how to feed it, is a very good method of feeding 
baby chicks. Many poultrymen never acquire the knack of 
this, as they either starve the chick or over-feed them and 
ruin the chicks' digestion. When this is done it is very hard 
to get the chicks in condition again. It is very unwise to 
starve them; they must have enough to eat, but they must 
be hungry. They must be fed enough chick-feed so that 
they are satisfied, but not so much as to keep them from 
being hungry at the next feeding time. Remember this is 
no starvation method, and you do not have to be so particular 
when the chicks' digestion is good. 

The chick-feed must be of the best quality, an inferior 
quality will kill them quickly. 

Knowing how difficult it is for some persons to feed the 
right amount of chick-feed to chicks, we will now start a 
second lot of chicks on a mash and use the same chick-feed 
we used before. As bran is used a good deal in feeding 
chicks, we compose our mash of six parts of bran (Bluestem), 
one part of corn-meal, one-half part of middlings and one- 
half part of fine ground oats. We keep this mash before the 
chicks at all times. We feed a small quantity of chick-feed 
five times a day. Our chicks do fairly well for a time, but 
bowel-trouble develops among them, and we lose a few each 
day. As we have no certain rule to go by in feeding the 
grain chick-feed, we increase the amount a little each day, 



Feeding 87 

but where we feed plenty, we notice that the chicks do not 
look so well on the following day. Knowing that hens on a 
well-balanced ration, when fed five quarts of grain a day 
to 100 hens, will eat four times this amount of mash, we now 
feed our chicks four times this amount of mash as grain 
chick-feed. Feed about this amount provided the mash is 
right and they eat lots of it. As our chicks have bowel- 
trouble on the food where we are feeding three parts of 
bran (Bluestem) to one of the other ingredients, we have 
to change the mash. We have noticed that the chicks seem 
very fond of bran and eat it out of the mash. Believing that 
chicks should know what they want, we now double the 
amount of bran in the mash, using 12 parts of bran (Blue- 
stem), 1 part of corn-meal, J / 2 part of middlings, J /^ part of 
oats. The chicks get no better and in fact the bowel-trouble 
becomes worse. 

Remembering from past experiences that a ration com- 
posed of equal parts of bran, corn-meal and middlings some- 
times stop chicks from dying, we now feed this ration and 
we lose less chicks, the bowel-trouble, however, continues, 
though decreased. Seeing this and remembering the prin- 
ciple of feeding — that bran is a laxative and middlings con- 
stipating — and desiring to tighten the bowels a little more I 
feed them the following ration: 

RATION NO. 12 

1 part bran (Bluestem), 

2 parts middlings No. 1 (Bluestem), 

1 part whole yellow corn, ground very fine, 

10% charcoal, 

1% salt. 
Feed about four times as much mash as chick-feed if 
chicks eat the mash freely. 



88 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

Ration No. 13 is used far more extensively by a large num- 
ber of poultrymen than Ration No. 12. With some grades 
of grain either of them will give satisfaction, but with other 
grades neither of them will give good results. 

RATION NO. 13 
1 part bran, 
1 part shorts, 
1 part middlings, 
1 part corn-meal, 
10% charcoal. 

Feed the mash dry and feed about four parts of mash 
to one of chick-feed. Feed the grain chick-feed in 
fine chopped straw three times a day. 

When changing to this food when other grains have been 
used the droppings become stiffer, the chicks' eyes brighten, 
they become more active and the bowel-trouble decreases 
rapidly. If the grains are not right the chicks will get worse 
instead of better, the bowel-trouble will increase and the 
chicks will remain in the brooder or on the roosts. 

To see if one-third corn in the mash would be better than 
one-fourth corn I increase the corn, in Ration No. 12 and 
feed four parts middlings, three parts of corn-meal and two 
parts of bran (Bluestem). When this feed is fed the chicks 
do not care for the grain chick-feed, they become less active, 
bowel-trouble appears, and the baby chicks become so weak 
that they fall over and do not have strength enough to get 
up. This is caused by indigestion, which is the result of 
feeding an unbalanced ration. 

Buying bran and middlings at random from the grocery 
store will never do, for you do not know what you are get- 
ting. You must get the right kind. 



Feeding 89 

I now try Turkey Red shorts with the Bluestem bran, two 
parts of shorts to one of bran and one of corn-meal and 
the chicks die on this mixture. When I change back again to 
Ration No. 12 I notice that the chicks begin moulting. Many 
poultrymen keep their chicks moulting continuously by wrong 
feeding. This is the result of changing from a heavy ration, 
like No. 12, to a lighter ration of bran and shorts. 

Shorts mixed with a little middlings are often sold as 
middlings. Herein lies one of your troubles. You must be a 
judge of grains and feeds. See that your middlings are mid- 
dlings and not chiefly shorts. 

Turkey Red bran being non-laxative, will give you better 
results than a laxative bran in many cases. By simply chang- 
ing to this bran the desired results will often be accomplished. 
Turkey Red bran without any corn or middlings used with 
it will cause a stiff dropping. But bran is not a very nourish- 
ing food by itself. Chicks and hens need a rich ration and 
grow much faster and lay more eggs on such a ration. If 
your chicks are in very good condition and you have green 
feed such as alfalfa, begin to feed it after the chicks are a 
week or so old. Some of the chicks are three days old when 
taken from the incubator, but the yolk of the egg furnishes 
them with nourishment until they are strong. 

Be sure the chicks always have plenty of water before 
them at any age. 

Trouble is likely to develop on Ration No. 12 or 13 or any 
of the other rations on account of the quality of grain used 
and to find the cause of this trouble is one of the most difficult 
of tasks. This is the most important part in the science of 
poultry feeding. 

If you are troubled with chicks or hens with watery drop- 
pings or real white-diarrhoea, the following illustrations will 
show you how to stop this immediately. We will say that 



90 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

our chicks develop very bad bowel-trouble of the watery- 
kind and begin to die. We immediately begin to change the 
bran and middlings and use every mixture we can think of, 
but no change we make does them any good. The more 
middlings we use now the more laxative the droppings be- 
come. We feed Turkey Red bran and middlings in the mash 
and this does not help. We cut out the mash and feed 
nothing but chick-feed, but this does not work. Now we 
feed nothing but dry bran with a very small amount of chick- 
food, but this proves disastrous, for a large number die 
from lack of nourishment. We now go back to Ration No. 12, 
and we notice that the chicks pick the bran out of the mash, 
and yet when we fed the bran with a small amount of chick- 
food they died rapidly. It seems as though the chick is 
trying to tell us what it wants, but we cannot understand it. 
At last the idea comes to us that there is something in the 
mash it wants and something it does not want, what is it? 
We cut out the corn and leave only bran and middlings, but 
the chick does not eat much of the mash. Then we cut out 
middlings and feed two parts of bran to one of corn, and 
the chick will eat this ration quickly. Now we see exactly 
what that chick wanted, it was after the corn, it is not fond 
of a large amount of dry bran, but it would eat it in prefer- 
ence to the middlings and corn that were causing the trouble. 
Instead of getting better, the more corn the chick now 
gets the worse its condition becomes, and we reach the con- 
clusion that the chick does not know what is best for it. 
We now* give a ration of four parts of bran to one of corn- 
meal, from poor corn, and put down in front of them Russian 
Red wheat and cracked corn. As the droppings were bad 
and watery we now bring about pure white-diarrhoea In 
many of the chicks in a couple of days with this combina- 
tion of foods. This is not a very good ration to produce 



Feeding 91 

white-diarrhoea, as it contains too much bran. More corn 
and middlings would be much better. This is the disease that 
kills millions of chicks annually. This is the disease of which 
learned experts say, in order to prevent it, to wash your 
eggs in a solution and spray the incubators in order to kill 
the germ. The truth is that this disease is caused by a poor 
grade of corn, too much corn, or a combination of corn and 
mill-feeds and there are many other combinations of food 
that cause it. Many people are advertising drugs to cure 
this disease, and are making money through cleverly-worded 
advertisements. Through clever advertising the manufac- 
turers of a certain incubator built up one of the largest busi- 
nesses in America and the main point to which they invited 
attention, was the biggest kind of a fraud. But it was done 
so cleverly that 90% of the users of these machines have 
never discovered this yet. 

I have shown you how to produce white-diarrhoea, but 
you must remember the conditions — indigestion, watery drop- 
pings and plenty of corn, and corn-meal of poor grade and 
a combination such as I have given you. If you tried this 
with chicks in good condition you may not get this result 
and if you tried this with a very good grade of corn and 
corn-meal it may not occur, although I believe it will under 
those conditions with any grade of corn. With a good mash 
you can sometimes put down in front of chicks all the corn 
and wheat they will eat without harming them. 

Good wheat, corn and oats are to a chick what good milk 
is to a baby. Poor corn is death to chicks, poor milk is 
death to babies. You may fool a baby with poor milk and 
you can fool the baby chick with poor corn, but fool their 
digestive organs — never. Babies have no commercial value, 
but baby chicks have. They are worth about ten cents each. 
Remember feed them good corn. 



92 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

It is far more important to prevent white-diarrhoea than 
it is to cure it, because when a chick has this disease very 
badly it cannot eat anything and will die in a day or two. 

It seems to me ridiculous to continue feeding a feed that is 
causing the trouble and try to cure this disease with a little 
"dope." Remove the cause instantly and by a scientific sys- 
tem of feeding restore the chick to health. 

White-diarrhoea is one of the worst diseases that poultry 
is subjected to. 

As I have shown you how to produce it I will show you 
how to cure it. Feed a mash composed of two parts of 
bran (Turkey Red) to one part of Ration No. 14. Feed this 
for two or three days and then gradually leave out the bran. 
Feed cracked wheat for the first two days and then leave 
out the wheat and use chick-feed. Do not over-feed the 
chick-feed, as this might cause the trouble to appear again. 
Feed no green feed for the first few days. 

Stop this trouble with the bran and wheat and then return 
to the richer ration. 

What caused our trouble in the first place was a poor 
grade of corn, or corn and bran. It is very hard to get the 
best grade of whole corn ground into a fine meal. Most all 
corn-meal sold for poultry food is corn sifted from cracked 
corn and contains most of the inside of the corn, this spoils 
quickly and is often deadly to chicks and hens, as are also 
the poorer grades of corn. I have fed hens, having good 
digestion, two parts of Turkey Red bran to one of corn-meal 
and also one part of bran to one of corn-meal with wheat 
and corn before them at all times, and they were in the 
best of health. This method would prove fatal with a poor 
grade of corn or where hens had poor digestion, or with 
some brans. 



Feeding 93 

Chicks or hens may eat too much corn at first, when the 
droppings are very watery, or they have indigestion and it 
may result seriously. Do not waste time trying to find 
something to take the place of corn and corn-meal, and do 
not waste time trying to feed the mash without corn-meal. 

Good corn-meal is worth twice the price you are paying 
for it, but it only costs $1.00 or so more per ton. Baby chicks 
and all poultry are very fond of corn, but they are very 
poor judges of the quality you feed them, and will eat it 
regardless of how good it is. If it is good it is very good 
for them, but if it is bad it often kills them. 

The more I feed poultry the more I am convinced that 
they know more about feeding themselves than I do. The 
only thing is that, when they are confined, and the grains 
we give them are of poor quality it is hard to understand 
their needs. The chick will leave other grains and eat corn, 
but it will leave corn instantly and fight for an angle worm. 
I have raised 97% of chicks that grew very fast on Rations 
Nos. 12 and 13, but you can lose them very rapidly on these 
rations with a poor grade of corn-meal and with some mill- 
feeds. 

Hens should be given a limited amount of grain; when fed 
all the grain they can eat, they are apt to over-eat to such 
an extent that some of the grain will sour before digesting. 
Chicks do the same thing. This can be avoided by feeding 
plenty of mash first and then following with all the grain 
they can eat. The grain can then be left before them at 
all times without danger. If the hens have very watery 
droppings these can be stopped by using Ration No. 11, 
after which a heavier ration should be used. 

If you will find out what is the best grade of corn (the 
hard, large, fully matured yellow grains, with little white 
on the ends, not the little round undeveloped grains that 



94 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

are often soft in the center and sometimes having more 
white on the ends) and use nothing but this grade of whole 
corn, ground fine, you will avoid the worst pitfall in poultry 
feeding. 

When feeding chicks on Ration No. 13 about 5% of meat 
should be added when the chicks are about two months old. 
At the age of three weeks mix equal parts of wheat and 
corn to the chick-feed and at the end of four weeks it will 
not be necessary to feed any more chick-feed. 



INDIGESTION 

Under this heading most of the bowel-troubles can be 
classified. It is principally caused by eating improper and 
unnatural foods. Just what effect exercise has on indiges- 
tion I do not know, but I do know that no amount of 
exercise will cure it. Neither will a starvation method do 
any good. 

When hens are troubled with indigestion and are given 
a heavy feeding of anything whether it is bran, middlings, 
meat or green feed or grain, it is noticeable that on the 
following day more bowel-trouble will be noticed than usual. 
This seems to prove that over-feeding is the cause of this, 
yet you can take a large flock of chicks that are fed on a 
mash that is not properly balanced and which have indiges- 
tion and bowel-trouble, and by leaving out the mash, feeding 
them chick-feed of a good grade, little bowel-trouble will 
be noticed on the day following. This shows that it is largely 
caused by an unbalanced ration. 

If chick-feed is fed for a long period the chicks may begin 
to eat dirt on account of something left out of the food, 
but this is sometimes caused by over-feeding the chick-feed. 




6* 
K 



Feeding 95 

Chicks grow very much faster if a dry mash is kept before 
them all the time, providing the ingredients in the mash are 
right, and the more they eat the faster they grow. 

This method proves far more satisfactory than any other 
method that can be used, but at other times when a ration 
like No. 12 or 13 is used it is a failure on account of the 
chicks getting indigestion. 

With some chicks and flocks of hens I have had they would 
not be hungry at feeding time and many of them would 
remain on the roost. They all had indigestion or bowel- 
trouble and it was very hard to stop it with a ration like 
No. 12 or 13. In raising chicks I have had the same thing 
happen. The chicks would be growing very fast on Ration 
No. 12 or 13 and many similar rations, but on getting another 
shipment of bran, corn or middlings from the mill, or from 
some other cause, they would get bowel-trouble or indiges- 
tion and die in/ spite of everything I could do to save them. 
They would remain on the roost most of the time and 
occasionally get off to get a little mash. Many of them would 
not eat chicks-feed or grain. This is often caused by the 
variation in brans, middlings or by the quality of the corn. 

If you should at any time have a similar experience you 
can stop these chicks from dying and get them in condition 
by feeding my system. 

The methods given here for raising baby chicks are used 
by more successful poultrymen than any other methods, 
although they do not limit the chick-feed to any certain 
amount of mash. 

In raising baby chicks, with some grades of feeds Ration 
No. 12 or 13 can be left before them at all times and if four 
parts of mash is given to one of chick-feed they will grow 
very fast without meat. With many grades of corn and mill- 



96 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

feeds, bowel-trouble and indigestion will develop and it is 
impossible to continue this method. 

The second method is to feed the chicks on chick-feed for 
the first week and then give them a little mash two or three 
times a day and gradually increase the amount of mash each 
day. This is a good method, but trouble will be met with 
just as soon as the mash is fed if the grains are not right. 

The secret in feeding chick-feed, is to feed them plenty 
but not to over-feed so that they will not be hungry at the 
next feeding time. Feed chicks five or six times a day for 
the first week. If they are not hungry miss a feed, but if 
they are at any time very hungry feed them immediately. 
Never let a hungry chicken roost on your poultry farm. Do 
not feed them if they are not hungry. When chicks are 
very hungry you know they have cleaned up the feed and 
that prevents some chicks from picking out favored grains 
and unbalancing the ration for others. This is especially 
important if chicks have a little indigestion, as it causes 
bowel-trouble. Go by their actions always. If they are 
hungry feed enough, if they are not hungry feed less. They 
will not eat some chick-feeds up cleanly and in such a case 
change your chick-feed. Do not feed a large amount one 
time and a small amount the next time. You must watch 
them very carefully, as it takes years to learn to raise chicks 
successfully. 

The ingredients contained in chick-feeds are no secret 
and you can mix them yourself if you wish, but it is not 
worth while unless you are feeding on a very large scale. 
It is not easy for you to get the good quality of grains that 
some manufacturers put in their chick-feeds and this is 
very important, for if you once get your chicks in bad condi- 
tion it is very hard to get them going right again. 



Feeding 97 

With a good chick-feed properly fed there should be very- 
little bowel-trouble, but if you do not feed it carefully they 
may all get bowel-trouble, but they will also do the same 
by any other method of feeding. 

When chicks are three or four weeks old mix equal parts 
of wheat and corn to the chick-feed. 

Many poultrymen think that meat is not good for hens, 
as it is observed that when hens have indigestion and a large 
quantity of meat is fed there will be more bowel-trouble on 
the following day, but this will also occur without meat by 
giving a heavy feeding of green feed or mash or grain. One 
of the most important feeds is meat. When hens are fed 
very heavy and are troubled with indigestion, bowel-trouble, 
etc., adding a large amount of meat to the mash seems to turn 
the hen inside out and causes a large amount of bowel- 
trouble. Poultrymen then form the opinion that meat is not 
good for poultry, but this is a mistake. The poultryman 
noticing the undigested food which is thrown off in the form 
of bowel-trouble, thinks that meat is not good for hens and 
tries to do without it. He is now on the wrong road and 
may never find his way back. If the mash causes bowel- 
trouble when there is no meat used in it this proves that 
the meat is not causing the trouble and if you will cut out 
the meat you can easily tell if this is the cause of your trou- 
ble. You will find that your mill-feeds are usually at fault. 
The lack of meat is often the reason of poor results being 
obtained. 

Bone meal is very good if placed in the mash, but with 
some rations it causes watery droppings and when hens have 
indigestion very bad, green bone acts like meat. 

On account of the many different kinds of beef-scraps, etc., 
and the many variations in grains and conditions of hens 
the only sure way to balance a ration with meat is to take 



98 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

five pens of five hens each and feed each pen one part more 
meat than the other pen and in that manner you will get 
the right balance. Begin with about 5%. When a heavy 
ration is being used the meat should be balanced to within 
one-half part of mash. It is not necessary to be so particular 
with a light ration. 

Have the feed boxes large, as they do not like to eat out 
of small boxes. 

There are many peculiar things in feeding bran, corn 
and middlings to poultry. You can feed wheat corn and oats 
and if it is fed properly you can get fairly good results, but 
just as soon as you put a little corn in bran or middlings, 
or use bran or shorts or middlings you are liable to get into 
difficulties. You can take a mixture of these feeds and get 
very good results and the next time you try it you get into 
trouble, although you use the same mixture you used before 
and feed it in the same way and while the conditions of the 
hens are in a measure responsible for this, the main reason 
will be found in the variations of grains and mill-feeds. One, 
two or three parts of bran, or bran combined with shorts 
and middlings, to one part of corn-meal fed to chicks or 
hens as a mash and wheat or wheat and corn for grain 
should not make hens sick, but it sometimes will, even though 
the hen is in good condition and the grains are the best. 
Sometimes you can feed two parts of a non-laxative bran to 
one of corn-meal and get very good results; in fact, this 
seems to be a very good ration, but at another time you 
cannot feed such a ration, as your hens will get sick and 
a large amount of bowel-trouble will be noticed. It makes 
little difference what method of feeding you use, or whether 
you feed wet or dry, as it is the ingredients in the food that 
count. You can feed them to the point of starvation and 
not cure them of indigestion if the grains are not right, but 



Feeding 99 

you can feed them all they can possibly eat of the right food 
and cure them. A ration without one-fourth corn is a very 
poor ration. There are some kinds of feeds that cause a 
large white dropping free from bowel-trouble, but I do not 
know what they are. 

Every ration I have given and hundreds of similar rations 
will cause trouble. Bran and corn are the principal feeds 
that you must watch, for there are many variations to tlje 
qualities of corn. By eating a little corn-meal you will 
notice that it is sweet and wholesome, while other grades will 
leave a bitter taste in your mouth. 

The reason that you get varying results from the same 
ration and the reason I have had trouble with these rations 
at different times is on account of the mill-feeds varying. 
With a good grade of corn and some grades of brans you 
can feed Rations Nos. 1, 7, 9, 10, 12 and 13 and get good 
results, but unless you have these grades you will have 
trouble and your chicks will die and your hens also. There 
is the reason so many people meet with failure. You get 
a receipt that call for a large amount of corn; you use it 
one time and get good results but the next time your chicks 
die and your hens get bowel-trouble. The reason you can 
feed, say Ration No. 13, for instance, and raise 95% of your 
chicks is that your bran, middlings and corn are of the right 
grade. Your chicks all live and grow very fast, but next 
time your grains are not the same, bowel-trouble results, 
the chick gets no nourishment from the food, they get weak, 
thin and die. You will get the same result from every ration 
under those conditions. With some grades of corn your 
hens will get grayish white droppings, etc., and your chicks 
get dumpy, stand around and the only parts of them that 
grow is the upper bill, breast bone and the wings. These 
hang down and some foolish people cut them off. Feed 



100 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

those same chicks the right food and in a few days they will 
begin to grow and come to life. The same thing occurs 
with a flock of hens. They change from sickly hens that 
you are ashamed of to a vigorous, healthy flock that lays 
and pays and a flock that you are proud of. 

On examining some corn it may appear good, but if you 
will grind it up fine and eat a little you will find that it will 
leave a bitter taste in your mouth and on feeding it to chicks 
they will not do good. 

You, can use some grades of corn-meal made especially 
for table use and get good results feeding it to chicks, but 
other grades of table corn-meal, although it is nice andi 
yellow, not bitter, it seems to be flat in flavor and may pro- 
duce the grayish white droppings when fed to chicks and 
hens from which many die. It must be responsible for a 
large amount of disease in the human family, for a food 
that kills chicks must not be very good for humans. If you 
cannot get a good grade of old corn, get a good grade of 
corn grits, as they are the very best grade of corn, grind 
them fine and use them. Test corn by its appearance, the 
flavor, but the best test is the chicks' digestive organs. Man 
has never yet fooled those. With some grades of mill-feeds 
and corn you can feed most any ration successfully, but with 
most feeds you cannot do so, as you chicks or hens will die. 
When you see a receipt given out similar to those given you, 
you can make up your mind that 90% of the users of those 
receipts are going to have trouble feeding them, because they 
do not know how greatly grains vary. 

I have used many hundred similar receipts, having good 
success one time and securing poor results the next. If you 
are having success with similar rations be sure you know 
exactly the kind and grades of those grains and stick to them. 
If your ration is right feed the same thing always, never 



Feeding 101 

change, because the change you make is very liable to prove 
disastrous, 

If you have been using any of these rations, or any ration, 
and do not thoroughly understand how greatly grains vary 
you may give the credit for your success entirely to luck, 
there has been no science to it. If you do not know what 
kind of corn or bran to get; if you do not know shorts from 
fine ground bran, or if you do not know what a good grade 
of middlings are; if you cannot tell middlings from flour 
middlings or middlings that are three-fourths shorts and 
you are getting good results you can consider yourself very 
lucky. But as sure as you remain in the poultry business 
without learning these things so that you cannot be fooled 
you are always in danger of landing on the rock of failure. 

Middlings No. 1 that are not flour middlings, or shorts, 
from either Bluestem or Turkey Red wheats have give me 
very good results. 

You will notice that the more bran you feed to a hen or 
chick the greater the craving they have for corn, and if you 
feed two or three parts of bran to one of other ingredients 
they will eat nothing but corn if they can get it. 

Corn grits, which are the best grade of cracked corn, 
should always be fed to chicks as a grain. 

Ration No. 10, especially where a little flour is fed with it, 
is much more fattening than Ration No. 9, although there 
is less corn used. It is rations similar to this that causes 
flocks of hens to become very fat and they are liable to be 
classed as beef-type hens when the food is entirely the 
cause of this. 

Chicks grow very fast on Ration No. 14 if the grains are 
right, but you should use coarse bran, Turkey Red preferred, 
and middlings, either Turkey Red or Bluestem, that are not 
shorts or flour middlings, and good corn. 



102 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

I have often found it impossible to get good results from 
hens by using Ration Nos. 7, 9, 10, etc., and would sometimes 
lose all my chicks on Ration Nos. 12 and 13. If you will use 
the quality and kind of grains and mill-feeds given in the fol- 
lowing ration and feed it the way given here, you should be 
able to raise every healthy chick, and they will grow very 
fast. If you are not able to get good grains, it will be better 
for you to buy a good chick-feed and mash already mixed. 
While this may not be as good a laying ration as No. 9 you 
will find it more reliable to use in many cases, and when the 
hens are in good condition it is very easy to blend this ration 
into No. 9. 

If you use miscellaneous wheats, brans, middlings, corn, 
etc., especially if hens are in poor condition, you will get into 
all kinds of trouble just as you will get into trouble with 
any other receipt. Always demand the kind and grade of 
grains and mill-feeds used with every receipt given out, be- 
cause, if you do not, you will eventually have trouble with it. 

RATION NO. 14 

(Conboie System of Feeding Chicks and Hens.) 

2 parts very coarse Turkey Red bran, 
1 part old whole yellow corn, ground fine, 
l /> part No. 1 middlings, no short or flour middlings, Blue- 
stem or Turkey Red. 
Yi part fine ground oats. 

Feed this ration dry and keep it before hens and chicks of 
all ages all the time. When feeding baby chicks, feed chick- 
feed in litter three times a day and feed four times as much 
mash as chick-feed. This is important unless chicks are in very 
good condition — four times as much mash as chick-feed. After 
three weeks mix equal parts of cracked Turkey Red wheat and 



NOTE. — Feed no oats in Ration No. 14 to baby chicks, as 
oats sometimes cause watery droppings inclining to white- 
diarrhcea. Feed no oats to fowls of any age if droppings are 
watery. If oats are ground very fine, use three parts of middlings 
to two parts of oats, but if not fine use half and half in 
Rations No. 9 and 14. When no oats are used use one part 
of middlings in Ration No. 9 and 14. Use no lumpy bran, 
middlings, etc., as it has been wet and spoiled. Baby chicks 
should not be fed more bran in Ration No. 14 except for a 
day or two. Two parts of middlings in this ration may not 
work well. If they bill out the bran or eat the corn and 
middlings and leave the bran, give equal parts of bran and 
middlings, keeping the corn at % part. If they do not eat 
the mash when, say, two parts of middlings are used, use more 
bran and less middlings. Watch the chicks, they will tell 
you and when you get it right they will grow very fast. This 
is very important, for if this is not done the chicks will not 
eat much mash and gradually become weak. Treat hens the 
same as chicks. 

I have a large flock of hens laying heavily on Ration No. 
14. These hens had indigestion and would not lay on Ration 
No. 9, but came into fine condition just as soon as I fed them 
Ration No. 14. They are fed the exact grains given and they 
have no meat or added protein of any kind. Also a flock 
without meat or green food. Another flock doing better with 
equal parts of bran and middlings with *4 corn and no meat. 
With the middlings I have I am getting the best results with 
chicks and hens by using equal parts of bran and middlings 
with % part corn. This is due to grain variations. 



Feeding 103 

wheat cracks better than Russian Red. After the first week feed 
granulated corn or corn grits to the chick-feed. Turkey Red 
the chicks plenty of green feed, also feed green feed to hens, as it 
saves from one-quarter to one-third of your feed bill and it puts 
color in the chicks' and hens' legs, etc. 

Feed no meat to chicks. Never feed meat to chicks that 
have indigestion. If their digestion is good they can be fed 
meat at any time, but it is probably better to wait for four 
weeks or so before giving them any meat, then gradually add 
5% of meat, but you must watch the droppings very closely 
to see if it causes bowel-trouble. If it causes yellow bowel- 
trouble do not use it. Try again a month or so later. If 
your hens are in good condition use about 5 to 8% of meat 
in this ration or use Ration No. 9. If your hens have indi- 
gestion do not use any meat in this mash, at first, because it 
will pass through the hen undigested and will be thrown off 
in the form of bowel-trouble and will do the hen more harm 
than good. I have had hens in this condition lay without 
meat where they could not be made to lay with meat, but you 
must be ready to add the meat when needed. The non-laying 
hens with indigestion cannot eat meat like the laying hen 
with good digestion. 

Feed five quarts of grain a day to 100 hens — equal parts of 
Russian Red wheat and whole yellow corn, and there may be 
times when hens have some kinds of bowel-trouble that it 
would be better to feed equal parts of wheat, oats and corn. 

Sometimes with a ration like No. 9 where one-third of corn- 
meali is used it cannot be fed to chicks or hens, as it makes 
them sick; now add three parts more bran to Ration No. 9 
and you get Ration No. 14. After feeding Ration No. 14 for a 
few days the droppings should be stiff, brown in color and 
the end tipped with white. This is what you want. This is 
caused by the Turkey Red bran. Ration No. 9 sometimes 



104 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

acts this way. Some brans cause large white droppings. It 
may be possible to use flour middlings in Ration No. 14, but 
I have never tried them. 

Feed the hens having poor digestion two or three weeks 
without meat and note results. If they lay well, leave out 
the meat for a while, but if they do not lay and their diges- 
tion is good add about 5% of meat and watch the droppings 
very closely to see whether it causes bowel-trouble. If it 
does, then leave out the meat. Usually after a short time 
the droppings get stiff and the meat can then be gradually 
added without causing the droppings to "break" and better 
results will be obtained. If the droppings do not get stiff 
enough after a couple of weeks, feed equal parts of wheat, 
oats and corn for grain. Do not be in a hurry, because the 
bran is binding and it is far better to make the droppings stiff 
with bran than with oats. When everything is right hens will 
be very hungry on this system of feeding. 

Ration Nos. 9 and 14 are the best rations given in this 
book and I advise you to use no other. 

Feed no oat middlings with Ration No. 9 or 14, as they vary 
considerable and sometimes cause trouble. Heavy white oats 
(including the hulls) ground fine is what you want. You must 
watch ground oats very carefully as they often contain a large 
amount of wheat middlings. Get ground oats that are oats and 
nothing else. 

If hens or chicks have bowel-trouble of any kind with Ration 
No. 9 it will be due entirely to not using the right kind or grades 
of grain. Use the same kind and grades of grain in Rations Nos. 
9 and 14. Ration No. 9 is far better than Ration No. 14 or any 
other ration in this book. The trouble that I have had with it 
has been entirely due to not using the right kind and grades of 
grains. Ration No. 14 is safer for chicks than No. 9, as a poor 
grade of corn in No. 9 would cause leg weakness. 



Feeding 105 

If you have any trouble with this ration, you will find that nine 
times out of ten it is due to the grade of corn. Stick to this 
ration (No. 9) as it is the best poultry food there is if you get 
the right kind and grade of grains, such as I have given. Some- 
times the best possible results can be obtained from hens when 
they are in excellent condition by feeding 7*A quarts of grain to 
100 hens and use 6 parts of mash to one of meat. 

If you cannot get good feeds for the mash and desire to 
feed grain chick-feed to chicks, for the first seven to ten 
days, feed a very good grade to chicks every two hours. 
Feed only what they will eat up clean. Feed nothing else. 
Do not be misled by them eagerly eating when you throw 
them the feed, as they will do this with food on the ground 
left over from last feeding time. They must eat it up clean, 
for if this is not done some chicks pick out favorite grains 
and unbalance the feed for the rest of the flock, and there is 
where all the trouble starts, there is where you ruin your 
flock and this is the most important point in raising baby 
chicks. They must be hungry — but you must not starve 
them. Learn that point and you can easily raise baby chicks. 
Feed no grain feed while feeding only baby chicks, as it will 
cause trouble with some check-feeds, and it only adds that 
much more feed — and more chicks are killed by over-feeding 
chick-feeds than most any other cause. 

The mash should be fed dry, as it does not do any good 
to dampen or cook it, as you are only wasting your time and 
will do more harm than good. 

Feed no meat to baby chicks for the first four weeks and 
not any then if they have indigestion. 

Give plenty of clean water to chicks and hens, always, and 
keep in front of them plenty of grits, bone, shells and 
charcoal. Fix feeders so chicks can not bill out bran. 



106 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

Be very sure to give the chicks plenty of heat until they 
are fully feathered. If the brooder is too hot they will move 
outside, but if it is cold they will huddle together and sweat; 
this stunts their growth. Chicks are only babies and all 
babies need warmth. You save money by using plenty of 
heat by the chick growing very fast. Use no fireless brood- 
ers, as the chick needs a warm place and the moment you 
confine their heat they may sweat and this weakens them. 

Some chick-feeds contain a large amount of oats, which 
cause a pasty white-diarrhoea when improperly fed and that 
is one reason you must not over-feed chick-feed. 

Oats used in many rations are very constipating, although 
writers for poultry papers claim them to be laxative, but you 
will notice that they cause a small, tight dropping, but with 
some rations they cause watery droppings. 

A hen's instinct is governed entirely by her cravings and 
when the ration is high in protein or laxative or where much 
bran is used she will eat corn in preference to wheat. There 
are wonderful things to be learned from the hen's instinct, 
but they are very hard to understand where we do not under- 
stand the variations in grains. 

A hen may over-eat on corn where a very laxative ration 
is used just as it is possible for her to do on a ration that is 
very high in protein. In the future we will understand the 
cravings of the hen far better than we do today and may be 
able to take advantage of them. 

It is very hard to give a method that will cover every con- 
dition and especially when some flocks are in a very bad 
condition. 

The kind of grain fed with a ration should be used more 
on account of the constipating qualities and the amount of 
protein it contains than the season of the year. 



Feeding 107 

Watch your hens and find out how to feed them and you 
will not kill them, but you are apt to ruin or kill the baby 
chick. 

If your food is right, your chicks will be lively and want 
to scratch. If the food is not right, they will not scratch 
because they are sick, and when they are sick they want rest. 

At some places the water is constipating and at others it 
is laxative. This sometimes requires a slight change in the 
ration. 

A food that is a very fine egg food may not be good for a 
flock of hens in poor condition. 

Experimenting on a few hens in good condition is an alto- 
gether different proposition from taking a large flock of hens 
in poor condition and bringing them to a healthy laying 
state. 

It is wonderful how quickly a hen will respond to the 
right balance and combination in foods; how quick the comb 
will start to grow, the crust start to form, the eyes to 
brighten, and the general appearance of the hen to improve. 

It is not drugs that are wanted, but the right foods. 

You cannot force a hen to lay. Giving her a ration high 
in protein does not force her to lay, for if she has indigestion, 
or if you over-balance your ration with too much protein it 
stops her from laying. 

Some mash foods contain 20% to 25% of beef-scrap, but 
with a high protein ration about equal parts of grain and 
mash are given. 

It is nonsense for people who should know better to advise 
washing eggs in solution to kill the white-diarrhoea germ. 
White-diarrhoea comes from combinations of foods. At one 
time in my career I had 1,000 hens suffering from it and I 
have had large numbers at other times. Corn that is sour 
will produce the worst white-diarrhoea. 



108 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

Use plenty of sand where the chicks can get it, but do not 
use sharp prepared grit at first. 

It is a fact, as I have pointed out on another page, that 
hens eating some rations under different conditions, or hav- 
ing indigestion, will eat grit, charcoal, bones and glass in 
quantities, and will eat it in preference to grain. Chicks are 
the same way, so if your food is not properly balanced or 
your chicks have indigestion, do not rush for some white- 
diarrhoea cure or some other kind of a cure. Get down to 
the real cause, and when you find it and remedy it your 
troubles will cease. 

Where five quarts of grain a day is fed to 100 hens, much 
more mash is eaten by the hens, and the ration does not 
contain as much protein. 

The more grain fed and the less mash, the more meat 
should be placed in the mash. 

The amount of beef-scrap given in these rations are about 
correct when using five quarts of grain to 100 hens. 

If you use plenty of litter (coarse planer shavings are 
good, but do not use the fine as it gets in the chicks' or hens' 
eyes) in your house and yards the hens will keep this 
worked up, which will prevent the ground from becoming 
contaminated. A small yard which the hens keep worked up 
and cleaned is far better than a large yard where the drop- 
pings are allowed to pack. Hens and chicks often get dirt 
in their eyes which cause the head to swell and is often mis- 
taken for roup, but this dirt will be found in the upper front 
part of the eye and can be removed. 

When the right grains are used, the best grade of those 
grains, the right amount of those grains and balanced cor- 
rectly every disease that poultry is subjected to through 
wrong feeding is prevented. When this is understood and 
your housing conditions are correct, your hens will lay, and 



Feeding 109 

that is the only way to make them lay. Not only will chicks 
live and thrive, hens lay eggs, and disease be prevented by 
proper feeding with good grains, but by careful observing, 
and by using different grains when hens are out of condition 
and noting their good and bad effects you will learn the 
secrets of feeding, the secret of disease, and how these come 
and go in accordance with your use of the right kind and 
grades of grain. We see the utter folly of tonics, drugs, 
condiments, etc. We see why milk cows fluctuate in their 
milk on account of grain variations, and how when dairymen 
understand these variations, they will be able to obtain more 
milk from their cows, and prevent all fluctuation. Not only 
do we see these things, but we see the cause of disease in 
the human family, and how it will some day be prevented 
by the thorough understanding of the food problem and not 
by drugs. 



THE CONBOIE METHOD OF SEPARATING CHICKS AT NIGHT 

Four hovers are placed in the same room, and around the 
edge of each hover I use a different colored cloth. For the 
first two weeks boards keep each lot of chicks separated. At 
the end of this time these boards are removed and the chick, 
becoming accustomed to go into a hover of a certain color 
will prefer that hover to any other. By this methd I prevent 
all the chicks from crowding into one hover and killing each 
other, and thereby overcome one of the most troublesome 
annoyances in the poultry business. The hovers should be 
placed close together the first night or two at the front of 
the raised platform and the feeding troughs should be placed 
in front of each hover. The first day after the boards are 
removed the chicks are lost and are likely to go into a 
favored corner at night, but by watching the first night and 



110 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

by proper arranging the hovers (after the first night they 
should be placed at the back of the platform and placed close 
together) and feeders, this will be overcome, for when the 
chicks become accustomed to a hover of a certain color, it 
will go to that hover. 

Toe picking at times becomes so bad that one becomes 
disgusted with the poultry business. I have tried putting 
everything imaginable on their toes without meeting with 
any great success. 

Take a long box about four inches high with wire on top 
and place it half inside and half outside (have three of these 
if necessary) and keep the chicks in this for a day or so, then 
put pitch-pine on the toe and let the chick go. I have stopped 
the very worse cases of toe-picking by putting W-2% of 
salt in the mash, but this is too much salt to use constantly, 
as it makes the chick too thirsty. I have very little trouble 
with toe-picking by using my system of feeding. The feed 
has very much to do with this trouble and you will notice 
that the more poorly the food is acting the worse the toe- 
picking becomes. The brooding system also has its effect 
on toe-picking, depending whether the chicks have a good 
place to go under. Chicks are not very liable to pick toes 
if they have a large run. If chicks have a craving that salt 
will stop, it must be good for fowls of all ages and I advise 
using l / 2 % of salt in all mashes regardless of the age of the 
fowl. But it is very hard to tell whether fowls require salt. 

The foreign egg problem that you are now having to 
contend with is caused by the same means that is causing 
95% of the failures in the poultry business (given on another 
page in this book) and can instantly be removed by the 
same method. 

It is very hard to get reliable information about feeding 
poultry, for what one man will praise another will condemn. 



Feeding 111 

Each judges the grains, etc., under the particular experience 
and conditions which he has used these grains, and his 
conditions, and the condition of his hens at that time may 
have been such that he has been misled. Seldom does either 
know the real secret and it is all guess work. 

But as I have pointed out, the secret is in the variations 
of grain, conditions of flocks, soils, water, etc. 

I believe that I have described the exact conditions that 
exist in different flocks, the conditions under which certain 
grains are bad and often fatal. 

By describing the actual conditions as I have found them, 
and as he will find them, I have given the reader information 
that will prove most valuable to him. I believe that by so 
doing I am removing from his pathway the rocks of failure 
so many poultrymen have stumbled over, and that this book 
will be of more benefit to him than all the other poultry 
literature combined. Here are explained the "little things" 
about which you have tried so hard to obtain information. 



IV. HOUSING 

Everyone thinks he knows all about feeding poultry, but 
those who are most advanced in this science know that they 
are only scratching on the surface of the subject. The same 
thing holds good in housing poultry. Everyone thinks he 
knows all there is to know about this subject, but housing 
is as highly specialized as feeding. 

You will seldom find two poultry farms using the same 
kind of buildings. You will find that many know nothing 
about ventilation or planning a plant, and through inexperi- 
ence and through not arranging their plants in the right way 
these farms are failures from the start. 

We learn from experience. I have put in many plants, and 
the way I install them enables one man to care for several 
thousand hens more easily than he could a far smaller number 
by any other system. 

I have the only draught-proof house in existence which 
supplies fresh air to fowls at all times and in any climate 
or location. 

Boards and battens warp and shrink and leave cracks 
through which the winds enter and create draughts. Of 
course, they are cheap, but like all cheap things they come 
high in the end. It pays in the long run to put in good 
buildings and not cheap ones, whether they are my poultry 
buildings or some other. 

I sell the plans for the buildings and also sell the buildings 
separate from the rest of my system. The lumber for my 
large poultry house to hold 1,000 hens costs about $350.00, 
which includes tongue-and-groove lumber, ten skylights, and 



114 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

boards cut to measure. While it could be made more cheaply 
with less expensive lumber, it would not be so good. Cheap- 
ness does not pay. 

The skylights permit the sun to flood every part of the 
building, and sun is one of the greatest germ-destroyers 
known. The building is therefore always as light as day. 
In some locations, nothing but the best buildings can be 
used on account of the winds. 

It is to be noticed that air currents differ in different 
localities. Aviators run into what are called air pockets, and 
many times one windmill will be run very fast while another 
not very far away will not run at all. In large cities it is 
noticeable that close to some buildings it is very draughty. 

In some places almost any kind of a poultry house will 
do. They are either sheltered or out of the pathway of air 
currents. An open-air house just a few feet away may be in 
the pathway of whirling air currents or of the wind, which, 
striking the building at a particular angle, causes a suction 
which creates a draught. 

Some houses are not draughty in summer, but are draughty 
in winter, and vice versa, because the wind comes from 
different directions in the different seasons and the air 
currents are different. 

Food troubles and roup are the cause of 95% of those fail- 
ures in the poultry business which are not caused by "the 
interests." They exceed all the other troubles which are of 
minor importance and which are not dealt with in this book. 
They can be avoided simply by the use of sanitary methods. 

BOUP 

I believe that I have had a wider and more varied experi- 
ence with roup than any poultryman in California. I have 
been in some locations where roup did not cause much trou- 



Housing 115 

ble, but at one place I had 1,000 hens with roup at one 
time, losing 300 of them; at another location, 700 cases of 
roup, losing 200; at another, 500 cases, losing 100, and in 
many places I have had from 20 to 100 hens with roup. I 
have worked on many places, managed many farms and owned 
several, and the experience I have gained is embodied in this 
book and in my poultry system. 

Roup results from catching cold. I do not know how con- 
tagious it is, if at all. If I said it was contagious I would 
only be repeating what I have read and at the same time 
advancing the interests of my own system. 

The fact is that, after conducting a great many experi- 
ments, I do not know that it is contagious. A hen suffering 
from roup throws off a noxious odor, which must be bad 
for the health not only of other hens, ,but also of human 
beings. I am, therefore, very careful in my experiments not 
to subject myself for any length of time to the atmosphere 
of a place where there are roupy hens. 

Take a building where there is not much ventilation and 
put in it a lot of roupy hens, and in hot weather the atmos- 
phere is vile. 

In the face of this fact, I do not know whether or not 
roup is contagious. No experiment that I have ever made 
has proved to me that it is. 

I do not believe a roupy hen should run with well ones. 
I have had a flock of 1,000 hens, nearly all of which were 
suffering from roup, and I could not separate them very well 
and have had to let them run together. 

Roup comes from cold, and most all colds that hens get 
come from draught. I know that a number of young chicks, 
huddling up together and sweating and cooling off quickly, 
will develop roup, but most all other cases of roup are caused 
by draughts. 



116 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

A hen in her natural state — that is, out in the trees — if she 
roosts in a sheltered spot, seldom if ever has roup, because 
she is then living as nature intended she should live, where 
she has an abundance of fresh air without draught. 

I have never had a case of roup but what I found that 
there was a draught in the hen-house. 

Hens in a draught catch cold, and in this respect are 
exactly like human beings. Draught is deadly to them, and 
it may also be deadly to you. Sit in a draught a short time, 
especially if you have been perspiring, and you will quickly 
begin to sneeze and before you know it you have a cold. 

It is the same with a hen. She feels a sense of danger 
and will often try her best to find another roosting place. 
You will often notice her roosting in a certain spot, as 
though she were trying to get away from something. The 
instinct given to her by nature is more reliable than your 
supposed knowledge. She is guided by this entirely, and 
under natural conditions she seldom makes a mistake; but 
put her in a roosting shed where she cannot get away, and 
if the place is draughty she will catch cold. Remaining in 
the same draught, her head begins to swell. 

If the draught is not very bad, she will go along for 
months, but if the draught is as great as it is at some places 
where I have been an apparently healthy hen will die in a 
few days. Under such conditions the hen's eyes will be 
found entirely closed in the morning, and in a few days she 
will die. I lost several hundred hens at one place with roup, 
but this place was exceptionally windy. 

How can roup-cures cure a hen if she is sleeping in a 
draught? If you are sleeping in a bad draught what would 
you do — take medicine or move out of the draught? There 
is hardly any one who would not move out of the draught 
if they knew that that was the cause of their trouble. 



Housing 117 

Medicine is not going to change the draught. It is not 
going to have any effect on the wind. Supposing that the 
medicine apparently cures you; it does not cure the draught 
which was the cause of your trouble, and its effects cannot 
be permanent because there you are still in the same place 
in the same draught and are subjecting yourself to a renewal 
of the same trouble. Don't you think the only sensible thing 
for you to do is to stop the draught? You would do so if 
you were sure that the draught was the cause of your 
trouble. 

People do not seem to be sure that draughts are the cause 
of roup. There are all kinds of roup cures. Their makers 
keep telling you the same thing, year after year, and you 
never get at the real facts. You are positive that a draught 
will give you a cold; so it is with a hen. She catches cold, 
her head swells, and this keeps on until she dies. 

Now, books and poultry papers tell you that a house hav- 
ing three air-tight walls and a roof is draught-proof, and, 
as an example, it is pointed out that you cannot blow air 
into a bottle. True, you cannot blow air into a bottle, but 
you must remember that a poultry house is not shaped like 
a bottle. Break off the neck of a bottle and you have a 
larger opening; now blow into it and at the point of contact 
between the air you are blowing and the air coming out a 
resistance is met. The air inside the bottle forces the air 
you are trying to blow into it backward, and at the point of 
contact there is is a back-draught created. Now, again, if 
you blow into the bottle at an angle or along the edge, a 
whirling draught is created, and you must remember that 
the bottle is absolutely air-tight except at one end. 

Is there any argument here? Isn't this a positive fact? 

It is, and any one that will make investigations on his own 
account can prove this to his own satisfaction. 



118 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

Depend on yourself. You have taken others' advice long 
enough. Think for yourself, make your own investigations, 
and you will have a better chance for success. 

A poultry house, not being shaped like a bottle but more 
like it after you have broken off the neck, is just as subject 
to draughts during a wind as is the broken bottle when you 
blow into it. 

When I first had hens with roup I did not know anything 
about it. I had several hundred fine pullets suffering from it. 
I had a large, round brooder house, made out of boards and 
battens for the sides and shakes for the roof. It was draughty 
when the wind was blowing. I did not know what to do 
for the pullets, but I read in a poultry paper that Mary 
Smith said, "When my chicks get roup I take the oil can 
from my sewing machine, fill it with coal oil, insert the 
spout up the nose of the chicken and give it a copious dose. 
If the chick's head is swelled, I dip the head in coal oil and 
in a short time my chicks get well." This is the kind of 
advice I have read in poultry papers, and this is the kind 
of information you are paying your money for — information 
which is not only valueless to you, but positively harmful 
in that, through your not knowing what to do, you try such 
inhumane treatment on a dumb fowl. Such advice gets you 
off on the wrong track. It keeps you from ever learning the 
truth and getting on the right road. 

A short time ago some one, writing for a poultry paper and 
telling how to cure roup by using medicine, got the manage- 
ment of a large poultry farm and very soon had hundreds 
of cases of roup. 

Any one who would take a chick suffering from roup and 
give it the coal-oil treatment should be compelled to take 
the first dose himself. How would you like some one to 
take and duck your head in a can of coal oil when you were 



Housing 119 

suffering from a cold? Wouldn't such treatment take you 
back to the Stone Age? If you would have any fighting 
blood in your body, wouldn't it show itself then? Wouldn't 
it make you want to do serious bodily injury to that person? 
Wouldn't every feeling in you cry out against such injustice? 
Do you think that it would cure your cold? If you are not 
absolutely sure about it, try it. 

Now, the chicken does not like coal oil any better than 
you do, and its young skin is just as tender as yours. It 
receives no more benefit from the dose of coal oil than you 
would. Take my advice here if you do not take it for any- 
thing else — never be guilty of such an inhumane act. 

Kindness in the treatment of birds and beasts is no more 
misspent that it is upon humans. Through kindness this 
world may be made a place worth living in. 

Never, under any circumstances, be guilty of an unkind 
act to your fowls, and you will accomplish more than in any 
other way. I feel ashamed when I look back at dipping those 
pullets' heads in coal oil. 

After that I bought roup cure — "guaranteed to cure or 
money refunded." That was what I wanted — something guar- 
anteed to cure. No old woman's methods for me. 

"Just put this in the water and the fowls cure themselves." 
So ran the legend. Consider what work I would be spared. 
It would not be necessary for me to catch the fowls; I need 
only put it in the water and my troubles would be over. 
What a fool I was to go to the trouble of dipping those 
fowls in coal oil! At last I had the thing. A roup cure 
guaranteed to cure or money refunded. "Just put it in the 
water." 

Well, I followed directions, put the "cure" in the water. 
But I had no warm place in which to put the afflicted birds. 
Most all of them had roup. Did they get well? How could 



120 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

they get well while they remained in the same draught that 
was giving them the roup? Not one of them got well. 

My large house in the oak grove was now finished, and I 
put the pullets in it and in a short time there was not a 
single case of roup among them. They had not a drop of 
roup-cure after they were put into this house. None of these 
pullets had very badly swelled heads at any time. Their 
eyes were swollen a little and they were running at the nose, 
but none of them were in the last stages of roup; in the new 
house they were entirely cured. 

The brooder house that they had been raised in was 
absolutely new and no chicks had ever been raised in it 
previously. The hens did not, therefore, get the roup from 
an outside source, but developed it among themselves. 

Now, what was it that caused them to get well? It was 
not the coal oil; it was not the roup-cure; what was it? The 
house they were put into was in a large oak grove, a quarter 
of a mile wide by half a mile long. The trees were about 
75 feet high and very close together — so close, in fact, that 
you could scarcely see the sky through them. This house 
was completely protected from the wind, as these trees 
formed a perfect windbreak. There were no strong currents 
of air inside the house, although the air was slowly drifting 
through it; inside, it was always nice and fresh. While it is 
true that the yards were damp in the winter time, it was 
dry inside the house, and after using it I never had a single 
hen with any kind of disease whatever. 

After such an experience, can you blame me if I have no 
faith in roup cures? Roup is an unnatural condition of hens 
and, being caused by draught, there is only one thing to do, 
and that is to remove the cause. 

Roup comes from a cold, pure and simple. It is very easily 
cured in its early stages by placing the birds in a place free 



Housing 121 

from draught and where they have plenty of fresh air and 
sunshine. 

Draughts are the great trouble. They are the greatest 
breeders of roup that exist. They are the cause of 99 out 
of every 100 cases of roup. 

The reason that draughts are not suspected as being the 
cause of roup more than they are is because poultry papers 
are continually telling the public that a house with three 
air-tight sides and roof is draught-proof. When you have 
such a house you think it is draught-proof, and that the roup 
when it appears is caused from something else. Here you 
are again in danger of failure from not being on the right 
track, just as you are when you do not understand the varia- 
tions in grain. Your whole trouble is that you do not suspect 
the cause. It is such a small thing that you cannot see it. 
Here, again, is the importance of little things shown. If it 
were a big thing, we all could see it, but it often requires a 
great deal of time and patience to find the draught. 

One reason a draught is so hard to find is that it may 
exist only on windy days or when the wind is coming from 
a certain direction and strikes the building at a certain angle. 
Even though there be no opening in the building except the 
one a few inches in size through which the hens pass in and 
out, and an opening on the other side for ventilation, or 
if the house is made of boards and battens, the wind, striking 
the front opening at a particular angle, will cause a suction 
which will bring the air down through the ventilator between 
the cracks of the boards and battens and out of the opening 
used by the chicks, thus causing a draught. 

This experience happened to me not long ago and is 
described on another page. This is one of the worst kind 
of draughts, as it is the least suspected, and in that fact lies 
its danger. 



122 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

A hen being in a draught and therefore liable to roup 
may not show it for a few days. When it does appear, the 
poultryman is at a loss to know how the hen got it. He 
reads the poultry papers and they tell him that roup is very 
contagious and he thinks the hen has developed roup owing 
to the presence of roup germs. He gets out his spray and 
sprays the place with a disinfectant, and as the wind has 
gone down the hen begins to get well and he thinks that 
it was pretty good advice that he read in the poultry papers, 
since it cured his hen of the roup. If this man happens to 
use roup-cure at this time, he becomes an advocate of roup- 
cures. The truth is that the wind ceasing, the draught ceased, 
and the hen, being no longer in a draught, quickly recovered, 
just as you often recover quickly from a slight cold. It was 
not roup-cure, however, nor the spray that made the hen get 
well; it was freedom from draught. 

Pretty soon the wind comes again and with it more roup. 
Out comes the spray or the roup-cure, and the place is dis- 
infected again. But this time we have more wind; wind 
means draught, and draught means roup, and instead of the 
hen getting well she gets worse. The poultryman is now 
absolutely at sea; he does not know what to think, because 
he has been on the wrong track; he never learns as long as 
he stays with the cure, or he thinks that he has to lose a 
certain number of hens anyway. 

One of the queerest things is that every man thinks he 
has just the right kind of a poultry house, although he may 
know nothing about draughts or about comforts for the hen. 
Looking at some of the little sweat-houses one is amazed to 
think what a hard time the hens in them must have. When 
one thinks of how one would like to live in one oneself, the 
prospect appeals about as much as taking the coal oil treat- 
ment. 



Housing 123 

It takes years of practical experience to put up a draught- 
proof house, just as it takes years of practical experience 
before you are able to get the best results in feeding. 

At the time I had those pullets in the oak grove I bought 
a pen of fine poultry from a distant State. When they arrived 
they were suffering from roup. These hens were also placed 
in the house in the oak grove and in a short time they were 
well. There was no more roup on the place as long as I 
remained there. Fresh air, without draught, was too much 
for the roup; where these conditions prevailed it could not 
exist. 

Roup is so prevalent today that the State Legislature of 
California has passed a law prohibiting the sale of any fowl 
afflicted with the disease. Not long ago I was at a market 
place and inspected 600 pullets six months old that were 
for sale. At least 500 of them had roup. The owner of 
these pullets said that they did not have it, but it was just 
a little cold. He sold them to someone, for three days later 
I saw that they were gone. 

When I moved near San Francisco I bought a large num- 
ber of hens and put them in the poultry houses that were on 
the place I rented. In a short time they had roup and 
canker, although they were entirely free from roup when I 
bought them. They kept gradually dying off. Some of them 
had large canker sores in the mouths, some of which looked 
like pieces of leather. 

The hens kept on dying, so one day I turned the whole 
flock out to roost in the trees. It was summer time and 
the weather was good. These trees were about 30 feet high 
and very thick; they were so bushy that the wind did not 
penetrate them at all. Now, the hens were in the fresh air 
at all times, and although some of them were coughing very 
badly when I put them out in a couple of months there was 



124 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

no more roup on the place. No roup-cures were used here. 
Once again the roup fell a victim to fresh air and draught- 
proof conditions. 

Moving to still another location, this same flock of hens 
which had at one time been suffering from roup and canker, 
and which had entirely recovered by being moved out of a 
draughty house into the open air, was now placed in colony 
houses. In a short time they again became afflicted with 
roup and canker. 

It was here that I noticed for the first time that the hens 
would try to get away from the open window and try to 
bunch up in one corner of the house. If I closed the window 
the hens would change their position in the house in a few 
days, and if the place was tightly closed the hens would be 
found roosting near the window. I changed the ventilation 
a great many ways and each change I made caused the hens 
to shift their position inside the house. They would not 
do it instantly, but gradually. 

It seems that hens have an instinct about draught as they 
have about feed, and if they are allowed to roost in a place 
where natural conditions prevail (the same as they are 
allowed to run out and eat natural foods) they will not get 
roup; or if they have it and can find roosting quarters that are 
sheltered from the elements they will quickly recover from 
the disease in its early stages. This instinct that hens possess 
in regard to roup has full play when they are living under 
natural conditions, and this is the reason that hens roosting 
outside where there is plenty of shelter — as would be the 
case if they were living in the densely wooded spots that 
nature intended them to live in — never have roup. 

In some localities, where hens are forced to roost out in 
the open and without the protection that nature provides, 
it is possible that they may get roup. 



Housing 125 

The moment you shut up your hens in a building you 
must provide them with the conditions that nature intended 
that they should have. If you do not, you are bound to suffer 
in some way. 

You wish to put hens in houses so that they may have 
shelter. You want to provide them with a proper place to 
live. You read the poultry papers and they tell you all about 
building poultry houses, and you build such a house as 
appeals to you. As to its draught-proof qualities, you think 
that that is all right because the poultry papers and the 
poultry books say that such a house had every quality that 
a good poultry house could possibly have. Yes, they said 
this and you go ahead and put up your house and the first 
thing you know you have a flock of roupy hens and you do 
not know where your trouble comes from. You have placed 
your hens in a house that at times has a draught in it, and 
at those times your hens get roup and the trouble begins 
which puts so many poultry farms out of business. 

When you take a hen that has been running out and getting 
a natural food and shut her up, you must balance her food 
properly, because the food she gets in confinement is not the 
same that she would get in a natural state. If you balance 
her food correctly, the hen keeps on laying and remains in 
excellent condition; but if you do not know how to balance 
her ration, if you do not know of the variations in grain, in 
fact, if you do not get down to the fine points of feeding, 
your hen will cease to lay and your trouble begins. The 
same thing occurs where you put your hens in a building 
that is not draught proof. The house looks all right, and not 
knowing that roup actually comes from draught (being mis- 
led by so many conflicting opinions), you will go on for years 
losing a large number of your flock from roup, and at the 



126 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

end of your poultry career you are not one bit wiser than 
the day you started in. 

This is why many are constrained to say after a long time 
spent in the business, "I don't know any more about the 
poultry business than when I began 20 years ago." The 
substance of the whole thing is that you were wasting your 
time on roup-cures or spraying or some other wrong road, 
and consequently you never got on the right track. If roup 
was caused by something obvious which everybody could see, 
you would have seen it and avoided it; but it is caused from 
a very small thing, a draught, that exists only at certain 
times, and the cause being so small you never find it. Any- 
one can see the big faults, but it requires patience and time 
to ferret out the little troubles, which, small though they be, 
lead to the greatest disasters. 

Many times I have observed fowls in different houses — 
how they would change their position when I ventilated the 
house in a different manner. They were trying to tell me 
by their actions as plainly as though they had told me in 
words that they were trying to get out of a draught, but 
I could not detect it because it was so small. They seemed 
to know more about it than I, and they did. 

Most all manufacturers of roup-cures tell you to separate 
your roupy hens from the rest of the flock, which is unques- 
tionably a good idea. You should then, so they say, put the 
roupy hens in a dry, warm place, free from any draught, and 
give them roup-cure. That is exactly what you should do, 
only leave out the cure. Moreover, you should get the hen 
at the first sign of roup, as she is then easy to cure. As the 
disease makes headway, it becomes harder, and when it 
becomes very bad you may as well kill your hen, because it 
may take her months to recover and she may then have only 
one eye left. 







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Housing 127 

When you separate a roupy hen from the flock and put 
her in a dry draught-proof place where there is plenty of sun, 
she will quickly recover. If you have given her roup-cure, 
you give the cure the credit of curing her, when as a matter 
of fact it was freedom from draught, together with the sun. 

My next experience was in a location that was very well 
protected by trees. The wind did not reach my poultry 
house, though it might have done so in the winter with the 
wind coming from another direction. Here I had several 
hundred hens and was not troubled at all with roup. 

I next established a poultry farm for a man and put up a 
large fresh-air house 16x100 feet in size. It was seven feet 
high at the back and nine feet high in front. The front was 
entirely open and faced toward the east. The valley in which 
it was located ran north and south. 

When the wind blew it swept this house from one end to 
the other, and at roosting time all the hens would try to roost 
in the laying room, which was at one end of the building. This 
room was boarded up all around, so that the wind did not 
enter it. The hens would try to get in here, and I could 
hardly keep them out. 

This building had three air-tight walls and roof and, 
according to the poultry papers and poultry books, it should 
have been draught-proof. The owner, taking all his informa- 
tion from the poultry papers and books, declared that this 
building was draught-proof, and he showed me books, etc., 
which would make almost anyone think that such was the 
case. 

Many of the hens were suffering from roup, and he advised 
me to get a good roup cure. I shut up some of these hens 
for two weeks in one end of the house and bought a roup 
cure, which, of course, was advertised as "the best." I tried 
it, but the hens were no better off than they were before; in 



128 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

fact, they were worse off than when I began because they 
were shut up in the draught all day long, whereas formerly 
they were in it only part of the time. I have never used 
roup cures since and never expect to again. 

When cleaning the dropping-boards of this house every 
morning, I noticed that sometimes the dust raised would 
move in directions opposite to that in which the wind was 
moving outside the building. This phenomenon mystified 
me, and I could offer no explanation of it. On days when 
the wind was blowing, this dust from the dropping-boards 
would move faster than on days when there was no wind, 
and during hard winds it would move very rapidly. The air 
current moving the dust formed a draught, which, moving 
in a direction opposite to the wind might be properly called 
a back-draught. I watched this closely and became certain 
that my hens were getting roup from this draught. The 
question now was how to stop it. 

I read in some paper that you should have partitions in 
your house to stop draught, although in the same paper it 
had said a short time before that this kind of house could 
not be draughty. Well, if partitions would stop the draught, 
I would put them in. I put in partitions every ten feet. This 
immediately stopped the wind from sweeping it from end to 
end, but the draught still remained, although it whirled around 
in a shorter space. A draught whirling around in a short 
space is as bad as a draught that has a long sweep, so I did 
not gain anything by putting in the partitions. I could easily 
observe this short draught by watching the dust from the 
dropping-boards when cleaning them. As I still found that 
it moved in a backward direction, I nailed up part of the 
front of the house and tried to ventilate it through the win- 
dows. But I still had a draught. I tried to ventilate it in 



Housing 129 

every way imaginable, but I never succeeded in stopping the 
draught. 

We were losing so many hens that something had to be 
done to stop the roup. Thinking that if the house faced toward 
the south so that the wind would strike it either in the front 
or the back it might stop the draught, this large house 
(16x100 feet) was lifted up and turned around, so that it 
faced in a transverse direction. While the draught was not 
quite as bad thereafter, it was still in evidence and plainly 
showed when cleaning the dropping-boards. The hens had 
the roup just as bad as before. My knowledge of draughts 
had been greatly increased at this place, although I did not 
solve the problem. 

From a financial point of view this farm was an absolute 
failure. The hens were suffering greatly from roup and 
would stand around all day, and I could not do much with 
them. But I could easily see the cause of my trouble, and I 
was determined to solve it. 

Some people are disposed to be very suspicious of a man 
who has made a failure. A man who, knowing this, is still 
willing to come out and tell of his failures — in fact, empha- 
sizes them and does not try to keep them in the background, 
but tells the truth and explains his failures to you so that 
you may profit by his mistakes — such a man must have 
knowledge that will help to lead you to success. The man 
who is not afraid of your criticisms, who invites your suspi- 
cion, your skepticism, who has nothing to fear but every- 
thing to gain from such a procedure, should by all means 
be accorded a careful hearing. You have read enough from 
the pens of those who have carefully covered up their mis- 
takes. A man who has never made a failure is like one man 
who never made a mistake. He is the man who never tried 
and who never accomplished anything worth while. 



130 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

I next established a poultry farm at another place. This 
was the most fortunate occurrence of my life, for here the 
conditions were as bad as they could possibly be. The wind 
blew ninety-nine days out of a hundred during the summer 
months, and you can understand what a splendid opportunity 
this was to study roup. At other places the draughts in 
the buildings were so small that I had a very hard time 
finding them, and they existed only on certain days when the 
wind would be blowing, which as a rule would not be very 
often. But here I had the wind, day after day, and a hard 
wind at that. I did not have any little draughts such as I 
had at other places, but a draught of tremendous proportions, 
and I had to solve it or quit the poultry business. 

I bought about 1,200 hens that, as far as I could see, were 
entirely free from roup. These were put into a building that 
had just been built. I was very careful not to' buy from 
any flock in which roup existed, and I refused more than one 
good flock of hens because there was roup among them. In 
a short time the hens I put in this new building began to 
cough, They would try to get out of the draught into one 
corner, and their eyes began to get watery. 

I put in partitions and tried one method of ventilation and 
then another. If there is any method of ventilation that I 
have not tried it is because my imagination has its limita- 
tions, although I have never yet been at a loss to think of 
something different. Nothing I did seemed to help the hens. 
Their heads began to swell, and I lost over 200 of them in 
a very short time. These hens began to get big canker sores 
in their mouths, and I had what was positively the worst 
flock of hens that I ever had in my life. By opening the 
doors of the partitions inside the building, I would create 
a draught so great that it would seem that the house was 
a chimney made for draught instead of a building made for 



Housing 131 

housing hens. This was the condition when the wind was 
blowing and the curtains were down in front. This draught 
could be easily seen by watching the dust and fine feathers 
as they swept through the doors of the partitions. The 
strangest part of the draught was that the air currents a few 
inches inside this building would be moving in the opposite 
direction from that in which the wind was blowing. The air 
currents would move in opposite directions, although they 
were only a few inches apart. Here again was a back- 
draught. 

In order to find out more about back-draught and the 
different movements of the air currents. I got a lot of small, 
light feathers, attached them to fine threads and placed them 
all around in the building. When the wind would be blowing 
I could see exactly how the air currents would act. I soon 
found out that the slightest breeze would create a back- 
draught and that if I opened a large door at one end of the 
building this back-draught would stop. But I was no better 
off because I changed the back-draught into a forward 
draught. 

I had cut holes in the roof, holes in the back, and I had 
the building all patched up. My hens were all dying with 
roup; nothing I did stopped the draught. But I saw that if 
I left this place without learning how to stop the draught I 
would be just as badly off at the next place I went to. I 
might run into the same conditions, and while they might 
not be so bad at some other place they might be bad enough. 

I had had roup at nearly every place I had been, and if I 
left here I would probably never again have such an opportu- 
nity to study. Here I had the wind every day, and I could 
therefore make a new experiment every day. 

One day I closed the front of the building up as tight as I 
possibly could and stopped the draught that had defied me 



132 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

for years. I had plenty of light in the house, as I had ten 
large skylights in the roof. 

Here at last I had a house that was draught-proof, except- 
ing that it was made of boards and battens and a little 
draught would come in between the cracks. This was shown 
by the fact that the hens had a little more roup on days 
when the wind was extremely hard. Otherwise this house 
was draught-proof, although it was not my perfected roup- 
proof house. It was just a regular poultry house, made 
tight. This house is still in existence, and I invite anyone 
who wishes to learn something about draughts to see it. 

The hens began to show improvement by getting over the 
roup. 

Although roup did not bother me very much thereafter, 
the hens did not do quite so well as those that in a previous 
instance I had put out in the trees to roost. 

I now took the feathered threads and made a great many 
experiments with them inside the house. I found that the 
house was draught-proof, excepting on the windiest days. At 
last, after years of experimenting, I had been able to accom- 
plish something. I had solved the problem of draughts, not 
by using a new building of a particular type, not by using 
roup cures, but by getting down to the faults in the con- 
struction of buildings and by correcting those faults, provid- 
ing draught-proof conditions. 

Summer coming on, it began to get warm, and on hot days 
the heat inside the building was stifling; there being no 
circulation of air inside the building, it was awful, and I 
could hardly go into it. The heat would have been very 
bad without any hens in it, but with the added heat thrown 
off by the bodies of a large number of hens it was terrific. 
When I would come out of the building I would be perspiring 
profusely. 



Housing 133 

Something had to be done to let in the fresh air. I would 
let down the windows or open the door, but as sure as I 
would do this I created a draught and in a couple of days it 
showed its effect on thef hens. If any of them were slightly 
afflicted with roup before I opened the window, I would find 
that in a few days they would be worse. 

I tried in every way to ventilate the house, to let in a little 
fresh air and to make it fit for a chicken to live in. They 
would stand around with their wings hanging down, but I 
could find no way to let in the fresh air without causing 
either a forward-draught or a back-draught. I soon became 
so familiar with the air currents that I knew just what kind 
of a draught every little change in the ventilation would 
make, and I could easily tell, even though I had not been 
there that day, if the door of the house had been left open 
for any length of time, as the roup would show so plainly 
among the hens that were slightly affected. 

While I was trying to provide a cool, shady place for my 
hens, I chanced to pass one of the lattice houses, of which 
there were several on this place, which had formerly been 
a nursery. Inside this house were several of my hens. They 
were lying in there dusting themselves and otherwise enjoying 
life. I could not help noticing how comfortable they were, 
and I thought that it was not only comfortable for the hens 
but for myself as well. 

Here were these hens enjoying life to the limit, while over 
in the other house the hens were in misery from the heat. 
How nice it would be if they were all over here ! I believe 
in showing kindness to fowls, and I sat down in that lattice 
house and began to think. How fine it would be if I only 
had a place like this for a hen-house! Why not use one 
of these buildings for my hens? But I could feel air currents 
inside the lattice house and thought that it might be draughty, 



134 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

so I went and got my feathers and thread and began to 
experiment. 

I soon found that this house was draughty in a heavy 
wind. I made countless experiments, and at last I fixed up 
part of one of these houses so that it would be like the 
other house I was using; that is, it would have a roof and 
three air-tight sides and a lattice work extending far out in 
the front. This would provide not only a cool place for the 
hens in warm weather, but it would break the wind. If it 
would break the wind there would be no wind striking the 
front of the building, and there could be no draught inside. 
Not only this, but the hens would be in the fresh air all the 
time and there would be no draught. 

Here, in fact, I would have practically outside conditions 
and at the same time there would be inside protection. That 
was just what I wanted, for had not the pullets that I had 
with the roup years ago got well when I put them in the 
house out in the oak grove? At a later time when my hens 
were afflicted with roup and canker they also got well when 
I turned them out to roost in the trees. I now brought my 
feathers and threads into play again and conducted countless 
experiments to find out if the house was draughty. It proved 
not to be, and I brought over some of the hens that were 
suffering slightly from the roup — that is, their heads were 
not swollen like some of the others. These hens soon got 
well and I experimented on a great many hens in the same 
way and they all recovered in a short time. 

It stands to reason that the moment you provide your hens 
with plenty of fresh air in a place that is not draughty they 
are not going to get sick because you are providing them 
with conditions that nature intended them to have, and 
nature knows more about it than all the rest of us put 
together. 



Housing 135 

I thought so well of this house that I began to work on it. 
It represented the result of my fifteen years' fight with roup. 
I applied for a patent on it after I got it perfected. 

Those hens that were suffering very badly from roup I 
kept in another building. I kept them there for several 
months, and while most of them recovered there were only 
a few of them that had more than one eye left. When I left 
this place some of these hens still had the roup very badly, 
and that is why I say that it is not worth while bothering 
about hens after they become very badly affected with roup. 
It is better to spend your time in preventing, not trying to 
cure, roup. 

You will always find that the changes in ventilation that 
are beneficial to roup prove to be just as much so to canker, 
for canker is only another form of roup and should receive 
the same treatment. While I have had roup without canker, 
I have never had canker without roup. 

If you attempt to put hens suffering from roup out in trees 
to roost in bad weather, the change would not only be harm- 
ful to them, but the exposure would probably kill many of 
them, just as it would kill you if you were suffering from 
pneumonia and were forced to live out-of-doors in bad 
weather. 

At this same place I had a brooder house 18x50 feet in 
size and seven feet from the floor to the roof. In this 
house tongue-and-groove lumber was used. This brooder 
house was divided in the center, so that I had two rooms 
18x25 feet in size. Each room was ventilated by four air- 
shafts placed on the outside. These were about five feet in 
length and extended down to within two feet of the ground. 
Each shaft was provided with a slide to regulate the amount of 
air. The shafts were in the corners of each room. In the 
center of the roof was a ventilator, one foot square, extending 



136 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

about two feet over the top of the roof. This ventilator had 
a slide to regulate the escape of the air. The idea is to bring 
the fresh air into the room from each corner and drive the 
used air out through the ventilator. This looked like the 
best system of ventilation I had ever seen, and one brooder 
company sent out this plan with their stoves. 

This house worked very well except under certain condi- 
tions. For example, 1,200 young chicks were placed in this 
room and in a couple of weeks they began to die off very 
rapidly with roup. In a couple of days their heads swelled 
up, both eyes closed, a watery fluid ran out of their eyes, and 
in a few days they died. Since these chicks got the roup and 
got it badly there must be a bad draught somewhere; I could 
not be fooled any longer about the causes of roup. 

But where could the draught be? I investigated for several 
days and I could find no draught of any kind. I then got 
my feathers and threads and hung them up all around in 
the house for several days. They proved to me that there 
was no draught. 

No draught and my chicks dying with roup; how could 
this be? Before I put these chicks in I had taken out of this 
room 1,000 other chicks, three weeks old, without a single 
case of roup among them. Here was a condition that was 
hard to explain, but working on the theory that roup comes 
from draught I watched the feathered threads and one day 
in a wind I saw them pointing toward the hole through 
which the chicks ran in and out of the house. This hole was 
about 4x6 inches in size, and going over to this outlet I 
found a very bad draught. The wind striking this hole at 
a particular angle created a suction, and instead of the air 
inside the building going out through the ventilator it would 
come down through the ventilator and through the air shafts 



Housing 137 

and out through the inlet that the chicks used, thus creating 
a very bad draught. 

I now saw why the chicks had the roup. But if the chicks 
had the roup, why had not the other chicks that were in the 
same room a short time before gotten it? 

To get at the answer to this question was a puzzle, but I 
remembered that the trade winds which blow only in certain 
months of the year had just begun, and they had not been 
blowing during the time the first chicks were in the house. 
Consequently there was no draught in this house when the 
first lot of chicks was in it, but by the time the second lot 
was put in the wind had begun. With the wind came the 
draught, and with the draught came the roup. 

I regarded this as one of the best experiences I had ever 
had, because I was a long time in finding the trouble, and if 
I had not been positive that draught was the cause of roup 
and stuck to that believe I never should have found the 
real cause. 

In my roup-proof house the wind is broken 24 feet up in 
front of the roosting hens and 16 feet in front of the house 
proper. The roof of the lattice yard and part of sides of 
the lattice yard, which allowed the air to circulate freely, 
prevented the air from forming a pressure which would 
resist the incoming air and forcing it back, creating a back- 
draught, because the air inside the lattice yard would move 
freely in every direction exactly like the outside air. 

This is the secret of abundant ventilation without draught. 
The pure, fresh air is thus allowed to drift slowly around the 
hens, absolutely without draught of any kind, as the lattice 
breaking up the wind prevents it from sweeping forward 
and creating a forward-draught. 

Abundant ventilation without draught is identical with 
nature's outside conditions, in which roup is seldom known. 



138 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

These condtions I have practically created in my poultry 
system, but I have excelled nature in that I have provided 
inside protection from all changing weather conditions. 

ELECTRICITY 

By the introduction of electricity into the poultry business, 
the poultryman will have a far easier time of it than he has 
ever had in the past. By using electric incubators and elec- 
tric brooders, also by cleaning your houses by electricity, 
much of the hard work attached to the business will dis- 
appear. When you use electricity you are not worrying 
about your place burning up, and everything is easier and 
better. 

You begin to think that the poultry business is not such a 
bad business after all, that you are well repaid for the time 
and trouble you took to learn it, but be sure you learn it 
right. When you get up in the morning you have not, pro- 
vided you use electricity, a hard, dirty job staring you in the 
face, for, by pressing a button or by turning a crank, your 
house is instantly cleaned, and when you see how easily this 
is done you wonder how much of your life you have wasted 
cleaning dropping-boards and how much money you have 
lost in time wasted. 

THE AUTOMATIC FEEDER 

One day in watching my hens at the hopper, I observed 
that some of the hens would stay around the hopper and not 
let some of the others eat, especially those that were more 
timid than the others. There seemed to be boss-hens the 
same as there are boss-roosters in every flock. These boss- 
hens were the ones that were in the best condition, while the 
timid hens were as a rule the ones that were out of condi- 



Housing 139 

tion or moulting. I found that they did not get enough to 
eat and that they were consequently a very long time in 
moulting and coming into condition. 

Here I believe there is a heavy loss and one that has no 
reason to exist and should be prevented. Every little loss 
should be prevented, and if a hen is kept back in the moult 
she is just that much less profitable. 

Hens when moulting should have all the food they can eat, 
just as at any other period. Never starve your hens, for it 
does no one any good to starve. It takes food to produce 
eggs and feathers, and the moulting hen should have lots 
of food. 

After years of careful watching and experimenting with 
different devices, I perfected an automatic feeder which pro- 
vides a separate stall for each hen to feed from. The boss- 
hen cannot bother the others, and the results obtained show 
very plainly in the moulting hens because they obtain the 
amount of food they should have. It also shows an increase 
in the egg yield, as it guarantees to every hen that she can 
obtain all the food she requires whenever she wants it. 

SELECTING THE LAYERS 

Book after book has been written, telling you how to select 
the laying, hen from the non-laying hen, and they are about 
on a par with the books telling you that you can make from 
$4.00 to $10.00 a year per hen. They are only published to 
get your money, and after you read the book you feel that 
you have been swindled again. 

In my poultry system there is more than one wire parti- 
tion in the building, and in separating the hens after they 
have all passed through to the other end of the building, the 
non-layers are confined between two partitions. The layers 



140 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

are then "selected" over again on their returning to the end 
of the house where they had first been. Such non-layers as 
may have passed through the first time with the layers are 
now by themselves, and they are put in between the partitions 
with the other non-layers. Thus in a short time you have 
your non-layers separated from your layers without having 
to handle them and without any bother whatsoever. More- 
over, all guess-work is eliminated. By placing a few trap- 
nests with the non-layers, they can be caught when they begin 
to lay and be returned to the flock. The other hens can be 
Hoganized and disposed of if worthless. 

In feeding hens I have noticed that in the same pen and 
on the same feed there would be some hens laying and some 
that would not be laying, although they seemed to be other- 
wise in good condition. This led to repeated experiments 
with the hens that were not laying. I found that by changing 
the food on the non-layers that they could be made to lay, 
but when I would leave the non-layers with the layers and 
change the food — especially in the fall or early spring — the 
result would sometimes be disastrous to the layers, causing 
them to moult. If, however, they were separated and the food 
was then changed, the non-laying hens could be made to lay. 

I regarded this as a matter of the greatest importance in 
increasing profits. This feature of the business, if properly 
handled, may turn many a poultry farm from a failure into 
a success. 

I bought books on different poultry systems which told 
how to select the laying hens, and began to experiment. But 
the books I bought, with the exception of Hogan's "The 
Call of the Hen," were worthless and I never received any 
value from them. In making these experiments, however, 
I discovered the "Press-the-button system" of selecting lay- 
ing hens, which I believe to be the only practical way of 



Housing 141 

selecting layers. I believe, also, that when it becomes under- 
stood it will be universally used. 

Although book after book has been written telling you 
how to select layers, I have solved the difficulty in such a 
simple way that I shall give it only short notice here. 
Do not, however, underestimate its value on that account, 
because it is one of the most valuable discoveries that has 
ever been made in the poultry business. 

If this discovery is used intelligently, with proper feeding, 
it will quickly increase your profits. But I wish to say that 
this system of selection can be made valueless by a wrong 
system of feeding which will cause your hens to set in large 
numbers. The fault you will find is not in the system of 
selection, but in your system of feeding. 

First select your non-laying hens, then by changing the 
feed bring them into a laying condition. You can then return 
them to the flock. If you are feeding the layers a light feed 
give the non-layers a heavier ration. The experimenting that 
you are doing will here be very valuable to you, so do not be 
afraid to experiment. 

DRY MASH 

I use the dry mash system in feeding exclusively, although 
about 90% of the poultrymen in California feed wet mash. 
I feed the dry mash and keep it before the hens at all times 
if their digestion is good. At about 8 A. M. I feed 100 hens 
2y 2 quarts of grain and then about nightfall I feed them iy 2 
quarts more. It is scattered around evenly, so that all hens 
have an equal chance, and it is thrown on top of litter so that 
the hens can scratch. If the litter is light, some of the food 
will be hidden and the hens will scratch after it. 

In feeding corn it should be coarsely cracked at first until 
the hens learn to eat it; if it is fed whole some of the hens 



142 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

will run along with you and eat it as fast as you can throw 
it down and the other hens will not get their proper share. 
If you crack the corn, the hens will not follow you along 
but will stop and eat it with the rest, and they will all stand 
a chance of getting their share. 

Be very careful of variety. "Variety is the spice of life," 
but it is very hard to balance the simplest rations and a few 
kinds of grain without getting variety of mixture. A variety 
of foods simply means a variety of troubles. 

Keep grit before your hens at all times — granulated bone, 
charcoal and shells. Always have the water before the hens 
fresh and clean. When in a place where the water is bad, 
I boil the water that I give to the baby chicks for the first 
few days. The precise effect which the water at different 
locations has upon poultry and upon feed cannot be deter- 
mined. There is a great difference in the effects it has on 
human beings. I am of the opinion that it also affects the 
hen and necessitates her having a slightly different ration. 

IMPORTANCE OF SANITARY METHODS 

Sanitary methods should be employed. Dropping-boards 
should be cleaned every day if diseases such as chicken-pox 
are to be avoided. Hens in a natural state show that they 
know the value of sanitary methods by roosting in trees and 
by selecting a high roost where they do not have to breathe 
the fumes from the droppings. Droppings left on the drop- 
ping-boards day after day, create the finest breeding place 
for diseases that is known. How hens can remain healthy 
roosting a foot or two above a place filled with droppings, 
which have been accumulating for weeks and from which 
noxious fumes arise, is a mystery. The result is often shown 
by the fowls becoming diseased. 




<3 
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Housing 143 

THE THREE GREATEST PROBLEMS FOR THE POULTRYMAN 

While the feeding and housing of poultry are problems, as 
is the roup also, there are three other great problems which 
the poultrymen have to solve before the poultry business can 
become the safe investment that it should be for the poor 
man, and which he is led to believe it is. Unless the poultry- 
men solve these problems, there is always that danger of 
failure which every poultryman has to face. If he continues 
to allow conditions to exist which permit others, through 
their being able to control the price of eggs, to reduce the 
price of eggs in the spring — at which time it actually costs 
more to produce them than they will bring — he cannot hope 
to succeed. He must solve these problems and these condi- 
tions must be changed, in order that there shall be the 
same security from failure in the poultry business that there 
is in other businesses. 

These three great problems are: 

First. — To devise a better method of distributing eggs and 
poultry. 

Second. — To reform the poultry-feed business. 

Third. — To control the market and cold storage plants. 

The distribution and buying of the poultrymen is so unbusi- 
nesslike that if the evidence of their out-of-date methods were 
not to be seen on every hand it would be impossible to 
make anyone with the slightest business training believe 
that a business in which there are many bright men engaged 
could ever continue to use such methods. No greater folly 
than the retaining of these crude methods, which result in 
the failure of 95% of those who engage in the poultry busi- 
ness, can be conceived. If there exists a poorer method of 
doing business than one which causes the failure of 95% of 
those who engage in it and threatens the other 5% with 
failure at all times, it would be hard to say what it is. 



144 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

Taking up the first problems — that of distributing eggs 
and poultry: One poultryman ships to one middleman and 
his neighbor ships to another. How much better would it 
be if everyone shipped to one central house which supplied 
the trade. 

The unbusinesslike method of distributing eggs is closely 
seconded by the unbusinesslike methods employed in buying 
poultry feeds. In a small city where I was recently there 
were ten or more large dealers in poultry feeds. These 
places were situated within a few blocks of one another. Each 
firm had a large amount of capital invested in land; each 
had its large warehouses, its machinery for grinding grains, 
etc.; each employed experts to handle the feeds; each firm 
did considerable unnecessary advertising and some employed 
unnecessary solicitors and traveling agents to obtain trade. 
Now one large dealer could supply this district as well as 
the ten men engaged in doing so, and by dispensing with 
nine buildings, land, etc., and the surplus stock of food kept 
on hand, a great saving could be effected. The concentrating 
of this business under one head would result in the economy 
that goes with the best business methods. 

The third problem — that of controlling the cold storage 
plants — is, if anything, greater than the other two. When 
your hens are laying an abundance of eggs in the spring 
there are too many eggs produced for the market, eggs 
begin to accumulate rapidly, and as the supply is greater 
than the demand prices drop rapidly. If the market is not 
relieved, the price will go down to a point at which it costs 
more to produce eggs than you can get for them. If the 
poultrymen were properly organized and controlled the cold 
storage business, they could, when the prices of eggs reached 
a certain low point, put the eggs in cold storage and prevent 
the price from going any lower. They continue, however, 



Housing 145 

to run their business on the old competitive system and do 
nothing at all to help keep up the price of eggs, so that they 
may pay a profit. They leave this most important of all 
problems to outsiders whose interests are exactly opposite to 
theirs. If these outside interests did not step in and relieve 
the market, the poultrymen would not only, at times, be 
unable to sell their eggs, but would not be able to give them 
away. 

In the spring of 1913 eggs were quoted at 16c per dozen, 
yet a few months later these same eggs were selling for 40c. 
per dozen. They had been kept in good condition at the 
cost of a few cents. When the market becomes overloaded 
with eggs and the price goes down to practically nothing, 
outside interests, knowing the profit to be made by keeping 
those eggs a few months, step in and relieve the market of 
the surplus eggs, which has a tendency to hold up the market. 
The unorganized methods of the poultrymen and the organ- 
ized methods of the cold storage companies enable the out- 
side interests to control the price of eggs to a great extent. 
Instead of the poultrymen cooperating and managing their 
own business so that they could control the price of eggs, 
they do just the opposite; they do not cooperate, but employ 
the inferior and out-of-date methods of competition and 
allow these outside interests to regulate the price of their 
product. As outside interests are in the cold storage busi- 
ness for one reason only and that reason is profit, it is 
beyond reason of any sane person to expect them to pay 20c 
per dozen for eggs when they can get them for 15c per dozen 
by waiting a few days until the market becomes overstocked. 

The outside interests through the daily press shout that 
there is an over-production of eggs and by not relieving 
the market the price of eggs falls rapidly. There is undoubt- 
edly an over-production of eggs every spring, yet those eggs 



146 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

sell for nearly three times that price in the fall and the 
interests who produce nothing are making large sums, while 
95% of the poultrymen fail. The interests, working between 
the producer and the consumer, squeeze the last cent out of 
both, and the greatest of all wonders is how the 5% manage 
to make any money at all with such obsolete methods of 
doing business. 

The poultrymen using competitive methods must sell their 
eggs to the highest bidder and the bidders using cooperative 
methods are not going to outbid one another for the sole 
reason of helping the producer. As you do not provide any 
way for relieving the market when it becomes over-supplied, 
the outside interests step in and take care of the surplus. 
The cheaper they can buy the eggs and the higher they can 
sell them for, the more profit they make. By their superior 
methods of cooperation they make millions, every cent of 
which is taken from the producer and consumer. The poul- 
trymen, on the other hand, by their unorganized methods 
are losing millions. 

This is the first poultry book that has ever mentioned these 
problems. 

I decline to fill this book with such things as what some 
old woman did for a roupy hen when there are conditions 
existing that cause the failure of 95% of the people who 
engage in the poultry business. I want to get down to the real 
facts, the real cause of these failures, and I find that the 
greatest cause for failures is the poor business methods the 
poultrymen are using. I wish to point the way for them to 
overcome such injurious conditions. Why should anyone 
pay you 20c for a dozen of eggs when they are to be had 
for 15c? Would you do such a thing? Does not the 
cooperative method that the large interests employ and the 



Housing 147 

millions they make prove beyond the shadow of a doubt the 
superior methods of cooperation over unorganized methods? 

You do not see the Standard Oil Company allowing the 
price of oil to fall below what it costs to produce it or the 
Steel Trust or the Tobacco Trust or the Bread Trust or 
any trust allowing prices to fall to a point at which it costs 
more to produce the commodities than they will sell for. 
This is all done by cooperation and organization. 

You do not see the cold storage interests handling your 
eggs at a loss. But when the; price of eggs falls to a point 
at which they cannot be marketed at a profit, although this 
condition is due to your lack of cooperation and organiza- 
tion, you denounce the trusts and demand that they be 
destroyed. If this were a comedy instead of the tragedy 
which it really is, you would be the laughing-stock of every 
grammar-school child. 

When we stop to consider the wonderful undertaking 
accomplished by the government at Panama through coopera- 
tion and organized efforts, the solving of these three little 
problems of the poultrymen would seem very simple ; so 
simple, in fact, that it seems a mystery why proper methods 
are not immediately adopted. By the failure of the poultry- 
men to adopt these measures, millions of dollars that would 
otherwise go directly to them and to the consumer are 
going to those who produce absolutely nothing, but who, by 
handling the poultryman's goods for him, take most of the 
profits for themselves. They are enabled to do this through 
their cooperation and organization. If the poultrymen should 
cooperate and organize and employ the better business 
methods of cooperation, they would keep for themselves the 
profits that are now going to others. The millions that would 
go to them as producers would be lost to those who now 
handle their goods. 



148 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

The outside interests, through their cooperation and organ- 
ization, try to keep this profitable business. Through their 
control of certain newspapers that go to your home and 
which you read and which influence your mind, and in various 
other ways, they contrive to keep you in ignorance of the 
value of cooperation and organization, you persist in your 
out-of-date methods of competition, and the outside interests 
continue to profit. 

The complete and final solving of these three simple prob- 
lems lies in state or government ownership, in the establish- 
ment of a State Produce Exchange, State Feed Depots, and 
State Cold Storage Plants. Therein would lie the final solu- 
tion of these problems. And all other methods are mere 
by-paths. 

Under State ownership a central distributing house should 
be established in each district. To these central houses every 
poultryman might ship his eggs and they would be distributed 
for him at the actual cost of handling. The profit which he 
now pays to the middleman would thus go into his own 
pocket. 

Under State management, if the market in one place should 
become overstocked, the eggs could be sent to some place 
where the demand was greater. As there would be distribut- 
ing points only where they were actually needed, an immense 
amount of money would be saved and would go directly to 
the producer and the consumer. 

Under State ownership and management of feed depots, 
poultrymen would be able to obtain their poultry feeds at 
cost, plus the cost of handling. They could buy a few sacks 
and get them at carload rates. There would be only one feed 
depot to support in each district instead of ten or more, as 
is the case at the present time. The poultrymen may adopt 



Housing 149 

other ways, but they are only by-paths and can never help 
them as State ownership will. 

Under State ownership of cold storage plants, the poultry- 
men would be able through cooperation to control the price 
of eggs. They would no longer have to deal with outside 
interests which make millions by buying their eggs at the 
lowest possible price in the spring and which, through their 
ownership of the cold storage plants, are able to control the 
price of eggs. 

Under State ownership of the cold storage plants that 
powerful influence which is used to control the price of eggs 
below the cost of production would be instantly removed. 

Under State ownership, when the price of eggs reached a cer- 
tain low figure in the spring, you could place your eggs in the 
State cold-storage plants, receiving from the State the price that 
eggs were actually selling for at that time, and in the fall when 
the eggs were sold at an advance in price you would receive that 
price for them, less the amount that was advanced to you in the 
spring and the cost of handling. By this method you would 
always be sure that you could produce your eggs at a profit. 

When State ownership is established the 95% of failures 
in the poultry business will be stopped, but they will never be 
stopped until then. 

As the feed problem is today the feed dealers, the mer- 
chants, and the mills are organized. The mills refuse to sell 
to you directly except in a very few places. Time after time 
I could have made a success had I been able to get a reason- 
able price for my eggs and buy my feed at a reasonable 
figure; but in many places (there are a few exceptions) 
where I have been I have had to pay from 30c to 50c on the 
$1.00 above quotations for my poultry feeds. Moreover, 
I was charged for the best grades, while I generally received 
the poorest grades. 



150 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

A short time ago I was talking to a dealer in poultry feeds 
who was formerly a poultryman himself and who manufac- 
tures a good poultry food at a price as low as possible under 
existing conditions. He told me that a few days before on 
coming into his store he had seen among his customers an 
old man and woman standing at the window. They were 
trembling visibly, and under repeated questioning the old 
man broke down and said he did not have a cent left in the 
world and did not know how he could get any more food for 
his poultry or for himself and wife. The price of eggs was 
so low and feed so high that eggs could not be produced at 
a profit and he was ruined financially. He was without a 
friend and threatened with the loss of his home. The dealer, 
a large-hearted man, said to me, "Conboie, I pitied him. The 
tears came to my eyes as I beheld that pitiful old man, 
utterly ruined through his failure to cooperate with his fellow 
poultrymen." 

This dealer, knowing the out-of-date methods that the 
poultrymen are using, understanding the inside of the poultry 
business, and knowing that I was writing a book on the 
poultry business, added, "Go to it, Conboie, write a book and 
tell the truth. Help to change the conditions for poultrymen 
who work three hundred and sixty-five days every year and 
95% of whom fail because of these conditions." 

In some localities the poultrymen cooperate and buy their 
foods. In Petaluma many of them cooperate and through 
Lloyd's establishment obtain their grains at a reduction. 
Mr. Lloyd has been a great help to the poultrymen in this 
vicinity; so great, in fact, that the interests are fighting him 
in every way imaginable. Every possible means is used to pre- 
vent him from obtaining foods, etc. The manufacturers of beef- 
scrap, fish-scrap, and all kinds of poultry foods, and the 
large flour mills in this State refuse to sell to him. There 



Housing 151 

is a law which compels them to sell, but there is no law to 
regulate price. Mr. Lloyd has been cutting into the trade 
of other feed dealers and this has hurt business. The mer- 
chants, using cooperative methods, have warned the mills 
that if they sell to Lloyd they will boycott their flour and 
other products all over the State. Under this threat the 
mills refuse to sell to Lloyd for fear of being put out of 
business themselves. These are the conditions that exist 
in California today. At this writing Mr. Lloyd is trying to 
get the poultrymen to cooperate and form a large stock com- 
pany. If this plant is successful, mills will be installed to 
grind and mix the food, but Mr. Lloyd is being fought with 
such determination by "big business" through a lack of 
cooperation by the poultrymen whom he is helping. 

Some of the biggest interests in America are interested 
in the cold storage problem, and as they are in it for profit 
only they buy eggs as cheap as possible in the spring and 
sell as high as possible in the fall. Last year when hens were 
laying an abundance of eggs, the price was so' low that they 
were produced at a loss. These were the actual conditions 
existing last spring, and in the face of these facts can you 
ask if there is money in the poultry business under such 
conditions. What do you think of the poultry books which 
are being read by old people and which lead them to believe 
that they can make from $4.00 to $6.00 a year per hen? 

This book and my poultry system would probably sell far 
better were I to lead you to believe that you could get rich 
quickly by using my system. This is probably the first book 
ever published advising people not to go into a business when 
the author of the book has for sale what he believes to be 
the best appliances and methods in the world for use in that 
business. It takes all kinds of people, however, to make a 
world, and I am the one who says, "Down with poultry 



152 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

books! Down with poultry systems! Let us have the truth]" 

The American public loves to be swindled, and many will 
not like this book because it does not fill your mind up with 
air-bubbles that are bound to burst. But it may keep that 
money of yours in the bank to be used in your day of need. 

Don't you think it is about time that the poultry papers 
stopped publishing what Mary Smith did to straighten the 
toe of her pet hen and all such rubbish and get down to the 
real business of helping you? After reading this book are 
you still going to be interested in columns of rubbish by 
people who, with backyard poultry experience, write for the 
poultry papers? Or are you going to demand that the papers 
wake up and help you solve problems that are of the greatest 
importance to you and on which your very existence depends? 

Don't you think it is about time they threw off the yoke? 
You are wasting your time reading backyard poultry articles. 
Demand articles that vitally concern your success. 

In 1913 a large number of poultrymen reduced the size of 
their flock on account of the low price of eggs and poultry 
farms without number were abandoned because they were 
producing eggs at a loss, and this in the best part of the 
laying season. What disappointments there must have been 
for those people who had the "little home" idea! 

The big interests, learning long ago that competition was 
a very wasteful method of doing business, began to cooperate 
and in every business where they have cooperated improve- 
ment was shown. They have cooperated in the cold storage 
business and you do not see them bidding against one 
another for your eggs. In business competition means extinc- 
tion, cooperation means life. By forcing high prices in the 
fall and low prices in the spring, the interests have the pro- 
ducer and consumer at their mercy and, as everyone knows, 
"big business" is heartless. 



Housing 153 

But do not these things hold good also in "little business?" 
I was once managing a large poultry farm and was unable 
to sell my eggs in the town where I was located because the 
retail stores had made contracts with the cold storage 
interests to take their eggs at a certain contracted price. The 
retail stores were selling these eggs to their customers for 
as high as 60c per dozen. One store did buy two cases from 
me, on which my name was plainly marked and they put two 
or three of my fresh eggs in with the cold storage eggs and 
claimed that the whole lot were my fresh eggs. They kept 
these cases in front where everyone could see them and sold 
eggs from those two cases for over two months. 

The interests see the value of cooperation, but the tragedy 
of it all is you do not. You travel along under the disadvan- 
tage of competition with out-of-date methods, methods con- 
demned and discarded years ago by "big business," methods 
so crude, so unbusinesslike that you are the easiest kind of 
"game" for men who employ the business methods of cooper- 
ation. You still cling to business methods of the past century 
and until you wake up and learn the value of cooperation you 
cannot expect to be any better off than you are today. 

If you will not help yourself, who will help you? The daily 
papers tell you the low prices of eggs is due to the over- 
production which occurs every spring and that you must 
expect the low price. But as "big business" interests are 
not strangers with the daily press, you are only listening to 
the voice of "big business" singing, in the greatest coopera- 
tive act known, a song entitled "If the Poultrymen Want Us 
To Do Him We Will." 

In the California Legislature during the session of 1913 a 
bill was introduced to establish a State Produce Exchange 
where the poultrymen and other producers of food stuffs 
would all ship to one central house, which would handle the 



154 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

commodities at actual cost. This State Produce Exchange 
would be owned and managed by the State, and its proposal 
offered the correct solution of our problem. It was admitted 
on all sides that this was the correct solution, just as it is 
admitted that the State Feed Depots and the State Cold 
Storage Plants offer the correct solution for other problems. 
But this meant the taking of millions of dollars from the 
middleman and giving it to the producers, and to this the 
middlemen objected. By cooperation they used their influ- 
ence with their lawmakers (not yours) whom you elected, 
and although this bill passed the Assembly it was strangled 
by the committee to which it was referred. 

Here is shown the important part which politics plays in 
your struggle for daily bread, and when I say that politics 
is the most important thing in this world today I do not 
exaggerate a particle. "Big business" long ago knew the 
value of politics, as the shameful conditions that exist in 
State and National government have shown. You will never 
improve your condition very much unless you get State 
ownership and management of a State Produce Exchange, 
a State Feed Depot, and a State Cold Storage Plant, and the 
only way you can get these things is by cooperating and 
organizing and using the ballot to accomplish these things 
for you. Forget your petty differences, forget your little 
prejudices, if for no other reason than that it is good business 
policy. Do as the interests do, and by studying politics, by 
learning to think for yourself, and by cooperating with your 
neighbor you can abolish disease, poverty, prostitution, misery 
and untold suffering. Through politics, and in no other way, 
you can obtain a State Produce Exchange, a State Feed 
Depot, and State Cold Storage Plants. Cooperate with your 
neighbor so that he can live, so that his children can live, 



Housing 155 

so that your children can live, so that you can live, so that 
we all can live, and live like human beings should live. 

To those who think the State government could not suc- 
cessfully own and manage these State stores may I point 
to the work of the government at Panama. At Panama the 
government showed the world how it could handle the big- 
gest kind of an undertaking. It showed the world how it 
could own and manage successfully a line of steamships, a 
railroad, a cold storage plant, an electric light plant, a num- 
ber of stores, and even a laundry. During the building of 
the canal the government owned and managed its stores and 
put in charge of everything a man who was big enough to ignore 
any trust. Everything was bought in markets all over the 
world and sold directly to the consumer. There were no 
trusts' profits, no middlemen's profits, included in prices of 
things bought at any of the eighteen stores in the canal zone. 
The amount of business done amounted to over six millions 
of dollars a year, and everything was sold at prices less than 
it could be bought for in the United States. Besides this the 
government furnished land free of rent and miscellaneous 
things to the workers; it made a healthy place of the fever- 
stricken district and accomplished the biggest task ever 
undertaken by man. 

In the face of these facts, does it not seem foolish for any- 
one to say that the government could not run a few small 
stores? If it has done all these things successfully at 
Panama, why do you not insist that the government do at 
least a few things of a similar kind for you at home? 

Government ownership would stop 95% of the failures in 
the poultry business; it would stop wrecking thousands of 
homes, stop ruining thousands of lives, and stop untold suffer- 
ing and misery. Only when government ownership is estab- 



156 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

lished should books be written enticing people into the 
poultry business. 

Now, in order to get these State stores, you must interest 
yourself in politics. Search out "big business" in its lair and 
destroy it with that weapon of every American — the ballot. 

"GO ONWARD, GO FORWARD TO VICTORY. THERE 
CAN BE NO SURRENDER TO WRONG." It is your 
victory for the asking, but you must come out of the ignor- 
ance of ages. If you have any fighting blood left in your 
body it must show itself. Your weapon is the ballot and 
you must be skilled in its use. If you use the same method — 
cooperation — that the interests are using, they are powerless 
before your superior numbers; but if you continue to fight 
without cooperating with your fellow poultrymen your supe- 
rior numbers are powerless before their better-organized 
forces. Herein lies the cause of the 95% of failures in the 
poultry business — lack of co-operation at the ballot box. If 
you ever get anything worth having you have got to wake 
up and work for it. Organize, and think! If you imagine 
you will ever get it by remaining apathetic, you are dreaming 
a wilder dream than my wild poultry dream. 



V. CONCLUDING REMARKS 

If I have taken pains to show you the other side of the 
poultry business, I do not want you to think that there is no 
money in it under any circumstances. What I want you to 
know is that you must understand it and understand it 
thoroughly, or you can make nothing at it. If you do under- 
stand the business, you do not need me to tell you what to 
do. You may know more about it than I do. 

Those people who understand the poultry business some- 
times make money at it in spite of the handicap of present 
conditions, but their number is small. Most of these people 
started in on a small scale and now they have a large 
business, about the success of which there is no question. 
In a certain locality you can ride for miles and miles and see 
nothing but white chickens — farm after farm with nothing 
but chickens. The proprietors have no other way of making 
a living and they make it from hens. 

To me the future of the poultry business appears very 
bright. Large ranches are rapidly being cut up into small 
farms, the people are rapidly waking up and will no longer 
allow unjust conditions to exist. Meat is gradually getting 
scarcer, poultry will have to supply the deficiency with eggs 
and chickens. With a more equable method of distribution 
rapidly approaching, the poultry business offers a field of 
enormous proportions for the investment of capital and holds 
out inducements to intelligent young men who will study 
the business, make of it a science, and by using up-to-date 
and businesslike methods put it on an equality with other 



158 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

enterprises. Thus the poultry business will cease to be con- 
sidered a joke from a financial point of view. The watch- 
word will not be "work hard" but "hard thought." 

The author of this book has put aside indirection. He has 
burned his bridges behind him. He cannot go backwards 
and must therefore go forward. No manufacturers of poultry- 
nostrums, no poultry book or poultry paper, no real estate 
agent, no feed dealer, no middleman, and no paper of the 
daily press influenced by "big business" will have one word 
of praise for this book, or for my poultry system, but on the 
contrary will use every possible influence against them. You 
will not see my name in the papers, and whether my book 
and my system ever succeed depends on you. No one else 
but you is going to help me. 

If you like this book, get your neighbor to buy it and by 
doing so help its author and hasten the day for justice to 
triumph. If you do not like this book, tell your neighbor 
about it and prevent him from spending his money because 
he may need it more than I do. You will be doing him a 
good turn, and I believe you owe it to humanity to help him. 

In closing I will say that, to me, there is something more 
valuable than selling real estate, more important than writing 
for poultry papers or writing poultry books, more important 
than selling poultry systems and chicken houses, and that is 
the welfare of the human race. 

It is more important that we provide houses for human 
beings to live in, that we provide conditions under which 
every one can own his own home. It is more important to 
feed the human baby than to feed the baby chick. That is 
the all-important thing on which we should unite — the weak 
and the strong, the poor and the rich — to establish on this 
earth a system of industrial and social justice for all men, 
women, and children regardless of race, color or creed. By 



Concluding Remarks 159 

doing so we will not only profit by this kindness, but every- 
thing will profit by it — even the baby chick. 

This, to me, seems to be the most important thing in the 
world. Let us substitute for this cruel, heartless system of 
hatred, injustice and greed, of which we are all victims, a 
system founded on justice and kindness and good-will to all 
human beings. We are often forced to put our real selves 
in the background, and we learn to practice injustice instead 
of justice, unkindness instead of kindness, and dishonesty instead 
of honesty, on account of this struggle for existence, this 
struggle for bread. Deep down in the heart of you and me 
is the eternal calling for justice, honesty, kindness and love, 
and the touch of true kindness brings that which is our better 
selves forward as nothing else can. 

We are now in the midst of the most wonderful revolution 
this world has ever seen, a revolution to establish justice and 
kindness. I see in the distance justice rapidly replacing injustice, 
honesty displacing dishonesty, kindness forever replacing 
unkindness, and greed and hatred replaced by love. I do not 
see streets paved with gold, but I see something far more 
valuable, I see a just social and industrial system, turning 
hearts of sadness into hearts of gladness and overflowing 
with justice, honesty, kindness, and love. 

Yours for cooperation, 

CONBOIE. 



I sold you this book representing it as being the truth. If 
you do not believe it, if for any reason you are not satisfied with 
it, if you think I have misrepresented anything, or if you are 
so poor that expending of the price you paid for it will work 



160 The Truth About the Poultry Business 

a hardship upon you, return it in good condition within ten 
days after receiving it from me and I shall gladly refund 
your money to you. I have written what I know to be true, 
and if this book does not come up to your expectations, if 
you are not entirely satisfied and do not want my book, then 
I am not satisfied with your money and do not want it. 



